Book review: An exquisitely crafted slow-burn

Author Rowan Beaird appears as a writer with staying power and Tenderness provides a rare reading experience. Picture: Faith Kelsey Photography

• Tenderness 
• Rowan Beaird 
• Manilla Press, €17.99 

In an essay for Literary Hub, Rowan Beaird urged writers of literary fiction not to be frightened of clichés. I feel permitted to say, therefore, that her writing is a breath of fresh air.

Beaird’s sophomore novel, Tenderness, is an exquisitely crafted slow-burn set over a wedding weekend in 1976 off the coast of Virginia, depicted from three alternating perspectives.

“Shay was no longer in the cult, but still, it made her wedding guests nervous that she was bringing them to an island.”

We hear from the bride, Shay, who has recently left the dangerous Synanon movement and is reclaiming her sense of self after they urged her to drop out of law school and move into their Riverside residence. 

Interestingly, and in much more detail, we encounter the story’s action through Shay’s brother, William, and her former college love interest, Joel.

Spotlighting these two important men in her life adds a creeping tension — Shay is still growing out the buzz cut favoured by the cult members and may not be as free of the group’s clutches as she had hoped, despite eventually fleeing one morning in the early hours.

“Weddings are a time to sweep the past under the rug. Shay has a lot to sweep.”

She is marrying Andrew, the heir to a shipping fortune, who can provide her with the kind of financial stability she and her brother, William, lacked growing up. 

Conversely, her ex, Joel, rejected a role in his father’s business in favour of the labour of love that is book publishing.

His attraction to her continues to simmer, resulting in a triangle that remains a relevant geometry even with the wedding day imminent.

Told in dreamy, fluid prose that carries the reader along like a sailboat headed for the island on which it is set, Tenderness is the ideal late summer read, by turns engrossing and understated, shadowy and sleek.

Beaird’s writing possesses a taut authority reminiscent of celebrated novelists such as Ann Patchett and Emma Cline, and yet she is very much in her own lane, exploring last century settings through work compulsive in its readability, dazzling in its restrained skill.

Her debut, The Divorcées, was centred on a 1950s Reno ranch for divorced women, and references to 1970s cultural touchstones are artfully dotted throughout this second offering — namedrops include Bukowski, Ashbery, Farrow, and Bowie. 

The author lays down shimmering similes relevant to both the time period and natural setting with impressive flair, Shay’s mother-in-law is “small and thin as a matchbook”, a pair of underwear is “thin as the wing of a moth”, while a tear of William’s trickles “into the shell of his ear”.

William thinks also of how: “On an empty stomach, after only half a beer, his spine softened like a lit candle” and every few pages there is a similarly striking sentence.

Only momentarily does the material seem to stray from perfection — despite being relevant to Joel’s profession, punctuation references appear a few too many times and his romantic fixation can manifest, occasionally, as a little over the top: “In the cafeteria at college, Joel had loved to watch Shay eat.”

One also wonders if his naivety is stretched, especially as the novel develops. 

More on her old flame from Shay’s perspective may have been useful, and yet the restricted access to the bride’s inner mind is fitting for not only the cult backdrop but the wedding theme, positioning the reader in the viewpoint of any other guest, with descriptions so evocative one can practically hear the coupés of champagne fizz.

Beaird appears as a writer with staying power and Tenderness provides a rare reading experience, one more than deserving of an RSVP.

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