Love Me Tender concerns a woman, Constance, who decides to reclaim her identity. She had everything society told her she should want: a successful law career (sharing both a name and a job title with Constance Debré herself, this story by all accounts draws on true events), a husband, a child, financial security, and good health. Yet she has left her marriage to embrace her true sexuality and to live freely, writing novels during the day and sleeping with girls at night.
As Love Me Tender progresses, the newly free Constance is ostracised by the people around her – including her ex-husband, with whom she is trapped in a custody battle over their son. This is a ‘voice novel’, and Constance’s voice is extremely strong – sharp, assertive, acerbic, and wholly convincing.
This strength may also contribute to the novel’s only real weakness: it is a story told without much physical description, and there is no sense of what is happening in real-time. This interiority creates a distant, detached tone, which suits the iciness of the narrator’s voice and the intense, claustrophobic nature of the narrative, but also occasionally feel two-dimensional as the novel moves along. That being said, there will be few more exhilarating books published this year.
Love Me Tender, Constance Debré [trans. Holly James] (Tuskar Rock Press)
Price: £12.99. Info: here
words JOSHUA REES
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