Review : Tenderness by Robert Cormier

*Warning: This review may contain spoilers. Read at your own risk.


Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Release Date: March 10, 1997
Pages: 240
Source: Borrowed

The Story:

Eighteen-year-old Eric Poole 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?

--via Barnes & Noble

Rating: FOUR Gold Stars!!!

My Review: One word: KILLER

Only child Lorelei Cranston is a 15-year-old, somewhat troubled, teenager. Being raised by a single mother who's a serial dater and had a knack for getting boyfriends that would beat her. Her mother is a good person but let her boyfriends take advantage of her. Lori, on the other hand, didn't have boyfriends; guys didn't like her for her, they only wanted her body. That and her mother moving Lorelei around more she can count took a toll. Lorelei has fixations. Those fixations were things she had to do, in order for it to go away. Which is why Lori's fixation on Throb (a singer), who had a missing tooth, urged her to hitchhike to Massachusetts after him. Her fixation was to find him, kiss him, and while kissing him, stuck her tongue through the gap ... Only she'd get sidetrack by someone ... a guy.

Also an only child, Eric is an excellent student who lived with his mother and step-father. Although good-looking, he was still labeled one of the weird kids. But there's something no one would have ever suspected. Poole is a murderer. After the police discovered the Eric murdered his parents he was arrested. From there he was tried for the murder as a juvenile and was held in a correction facility for three years. After being released, eighteen-year-old Eric went to live his aunt.

So how are the two connected? Lori and Eric sought tenderness deeply. They wanted tenderness, they needed it. Tenderness drove Lori to have fixations. Tenderness drove Eric to murder dusky-skinned, thick shoulder-length dark haired girls. Although they were both affected by tenderness, Eric was more strongly affected by it. He found tenderness in killing the girls that he did. There was something about seeing the limpness of bodies that brought the satisfaction of tenderness. Tenderness didn't drive Lori crazy in the same manner though. She was looking for it in someone, to share it with someone. She didn't want tenderness in the form that Eric did, but yet she still managed to fall in love with him.

Will their search for tenderness bring them together ... or tear them apart forever?

***Check out Robert Cormier's website for more information about him and Tenderness: HERE

Happy Reading!