Tenderness - Softcover

Cormier, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385731337 ISBN 13: 9780385731331

Publisher: Ember, 2004

Synopsis

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD ERIC HAS just been released from juvenile detention for murdering his mother and stepfather. Now he's looking for some tenderness--tenderness he finds in caressing and killing beautiful girls. Fifteen-year-old Lori has run away from home again. Emotionally naive but sexually precocious, she is also looking for tenderness--tenderness she finds in Eric. Will Lori and Eric be each other's salvation or destruction?

"Cormier is in top form in this chilling portrait of a serial murderer. . . . Gripping."--School Library Journal, Starred

An ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults

About this title

Review:

With Tenderness, the accomplished author of teenage fictions, Robert Cormier, gives his enthralled readers a thriller with a difference. Eric Poole, latterly an imprisoned serial killer of beautiful young girls towards whom he feels great "tenderness" (having started his killing career by doing away with his mother and loathed step-father) meets his equally disturbed delinquent match in the lovely young teenager Lori Cranston, who becomes emotionally fixated on him. It looks as though she too will have to be taken care of by him in the usual way until her disarmingly generous love for him begins to make him experience emotions he has not felt since he was a baby in his mother's arms. Robert Cormier's deft portrayal of the psychology and developing emotional life of these two hardened young people as they dodge the law adds an unusual depth and yes "tenderness" to this riveting thriller with a totally unexpected twist in the end of its tale. --by Tamsin Palmer

Review:

*"Cormier is in top form in this cilling portrait...a sense of 'tenderness' pervades this gripping tale."
--School Library Journal, starred review

"Cormier's latest is a mesmerizing plunge into the mind of a psychopathic teen killer that is both deeply disturbing and utterly compelling."
--Booklist

"A serial killer; an aging cop with a hunch; an impulsive 15-year-old runaway: Three familiar characters are spun by a master of suspense into another disturbing study in emotional dysfunction."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Rarely has Cormier's irony been darker...readers will stay on the edge of their seats."
-- Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Ember
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0385731337
• ISBN 13: 9780385731331
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240