A provocative and fierce novel about motherhood, self-discovery and defiance
Constance Debre has written two other novels, Play Boy, which won
the Prix de la Coupole in 2018, and Nom. Love Me Tender won the
Prix Litteraire des Inrockuptibles in 2020.
Holly James is a translator, writer and editor. Her translations
have been published by Europa Editions and Semiotext(e).
'Committed to truth-telling, no matter how rough, but also
intriguingly suspended in a cloud of unknowing and pain, Love Me
Tender is a wry, original, agonizing book destined to become a
classic of its kind.' - Maggie Nelson
'A deadpan, tensile thread of a voice: calm, Camusian, comic,
stark, relentless, and totally hypnotic.' - Rachel Kushner
'Exhilarating' - Eileen Myles, author of Afterglow
'In cruel, brilliant sentences that tighten around the truth like
teeth, a fierce character emerges; a new kind of rebel in a queer
masterpiece.' - Holly Pester, author of Comic Timing
'Love Me Tender is a spitting, snarling tour de force of fuck-you
feminist defiance. Pulling us straight from the tender moments of a
mother meeting her estranged child, right into a whirlwind of
lesbian pick-ups, Parisian apartment-hopping and chain smoking,
Debre's novel is a stark reminder of society's suspicion towards
women - particularly mothers -who resist easy definition. Wry, bold
and confronting, Love Me Tender insists on a woman's right to
define herself, to choose her own life.' - Imogen Crimp, author of
A Very Nice Girl
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