Ostensibly a roman à clef based on Elvis Presley’s childhood and rise to stardom, Tender is in fact about the hero’s intense relationship with his mother and how it affects his life. The Elvis character, Leroy Kirby, is born in a simple building in rural Mississippi, surviving a twin who is stillborn (this will have a subtle ripple effect through the ensuing years). His upbringing is inconsistent to say the least; with his father either in jail or unable to hold down a job most of the time, the Kirbys are always living with family or on the run from landlords. Amid this uncertain life, Leroy’s undeniable singing talent begins to shine. He is first discovered by a teacher hunting for someone who can win a local talent show, but it is Leroy’s desperate need to justify his mother’s love and acceptance that drives him on towards success. As he grows older and less awkward, his singing ability combines with a devastating charismatic sexuality that taps into the frustrated female psyche of the 1950s. He is soon king of the music world. But as his phenomenal success grows, so his personal life becomes more claustrophobic - until he is forced to create a compound in which he and his family can live unmolested by his ravening fans. The only person who still has Leroy’s best interests at heart is his mother, and when her health begins to fail, so too do Leroy’s fortunes. This was the first Mark Childress novel I had read since the somewhat disappointing Georgia Bottoms, and it reminded me just how good he can be at running an entertaining story and a social subtext in tandem without detracting from either. He invokes the rural south and the 1950s era with precision and the reader is right there cheering Leroy along as he tries to make something of his life. The loving dynamic between Leroy and his mother is perfectly realistic, as are the supporting characters who mainly serve as foils to delineate the changes in Leroy. Even the low-grade hint of the supernatural permeating the narrative works to a greater literary purpose. Tender is, at its core, an examination of the difference between real love and the ersatz kind that comes from fame, power, success, wealth. Childress has an easy, almost relaxed style that invites the reader to gulp down his prose – which I did. The constant errors in tense began to grate after a while (perhaps Childress’ editors believe this is some sort of endearing stylistic quirk?), and the iBooks version I read was littered with typos, but otherwise Tender was a pleasurable reading experience, one I’d put right up there with my other Childress favourites, One Mississippi and Crazy in Alabama.