The first flash of crimson that cuts through the indigo palette of Beth Hetland’s Tender is revealed in a steak getting sliced open at the dinner table. This panel connects to the disturbing cover art and signals the encroaching body horror in a book that I found both off-putting and arresting. I did not feel good reading it, yet I wanted to re-read it once I had finished.
Hetland takes the raw ingredients of various social factors and cooks up a grotesque story of main character Carolanne’s desire for a picture-perfect life. What will Carolanne do to get the life she wants? How much of herself will she sacrifice? The author invokes the negative influences of social media and comparing oneself to others as well as the pressures of womanhood, motherhood, and achieving traditional milestones such as getting married and having a baby.
At first, Carolanne seems like a lonely young woman yearning for romance, family, and friendship. She has some peculiar alimentary habits such as eating her own hair and fingernails when she’s stressed out. During my note-taking for this review, I wrote, “What’s going through Carolanne’s mind?” before the violence and insanity had even truly begun. Feelings of sympathy for Carolanne soured to disgust upon seeing the way she manipulates others, particularly her husband Lee. However, an uneasy pity for her returned when understanding the effects of a miscarriage on both partners and their marriage.
Bursts of red and gold punctuate the predominantly indigo and white color palette. Dream sequences and violent fantasies reveal the disorder of Carolanne’s mind. Hetland draws several panels of Carolanne looking down: at pages she is printing for her scrapbook; burning the same scrapbook in a cooking pot while lit from below; tying up a roast; making sausage; staring down at her phone and at a pile of pregnancy tests; and gazing at her own swollen belly. The range of facial expressions that change Carolanne’s face as the image repeats is amazing. She is self-satisfied, smug, haggard, numb, determined.
Tender is an incredible work. It is a tale of insanity that is nonetheless inspired by the mundane horror of domestic and social life. Body and psychological horror fill the pages. There is also one scene of implied, though not graphic, violence against a cat (p. 122 if you want to skip over that). The experience of womanhood informs the work but any adult horror enthusiast will enjoy this book. Be prepared to devour Tender in one sitting.
Tender
By Beth Hetland
Fantagraphics, 2024
ISBN: 9781683969358
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+)
