Tenderness

The spellbinding story of Lady Chatterley's Lover, and the society that put it on trial; the story of a novel and its ripple effects across half a century, and about the transformative and triumphant power of fiction itself.

'Tenderness is a triumph and it will conquer your heart. Stunning, illuminating, but also, profoundly moving' Elif Shafak

'A passionate, epic joy' Madeline Miller

'Powerful, moving, brilliant ... An utterly captivating read' Elizabeth Gilbert

'As sublimely crafted as a novel could ever be. I'm in awe of Alison MacLeod's powers' Isabella Tree

D. H. Lawrence is dying. Exiled in the Mediterranean, he dreams of the past. There are the years early in his marriage during the war, where his desperation drives him to commit a terrible betrayal. And there is a woman in an Italian courtyard, her chestnut hair red with summer.

Jacqueline and her husband have already been marked out for greatness. Passing through New York, she slips into a hearing where a book, not a man, is brought to trial.

A young woman and a young man meet amid the restricted section of a famous library, and make love.

Scattered and blown by the winds of history, their stories are bound together, and brought before the jury. On both sides of the Atlantic, society is asking, and continues to ask: is it obscenity – or is it tenderness?

'Gorgeously written and meticulously conceived' David Leavitt

About the Author

Alison MacLeod is the author of three novels – The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels and Unexploded, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013 – and two story collections. She is the joint winner of the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award 2016 and was a finalist for the 2017 Governor General’s Award. She was Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester until 2018, when she became Visiting Professor to write full-time. She lives in Brighton.