Tenderness is a passionate, epic joy. It's a paean to artistic imagination and freedom, and also to the messy complexity of humanity. The characters leap from the page with astonishing life that is all the more impressive given their historical fame. MacLeod's prose is a masterclass - gripping, lyrical, witty, razor-sharp and filled with, yes, tenderness. I will never forget it.

Madeline Miller, author of CIRCE

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

Elif Shafak, author of THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES

What a triumph of skill and imagination is this powerful, moving, brilliant novel! I've never read anything quite like TENDERNESS, and I doubt I ever will again. This is more than a book about a book; this is a book about living - about really living, at the most dangerous and beautiful edges of the human experience. I stand in awe of Alison MacLeod. She is a novelist operating at the peak of her powers - no less a genius than the master whose work she has so lovingly and shrewdly explored here. She moves across time and space like a wizard, wrapping up fact within fiction so magically that you can't find a seam anywhere. TENDERNESS is an utterly captivating read, and I came away from it with this astonished thought: There's nothing this writer can't do.

Elizabeth Gilbert

An ambitious sprawl of a book, splendidly extreme in its magnitude, yet always elegant; a defence of complicated thinking and embodied life.

The Guardian

[An] ambitious blend of research, guesswork, and fabrication.

New York Times Book Review, Best Historical Fiction of 2021

Glorious and arresting ... A widescreen novel.

Observer