Tender

Mark Childress gets it. He gets the whole picture. He transports you into prewar, dirt-floor Mississippi with a gentle hand and guides you through the turbulent youth of The Man Who Would Become The King. Through the boy-king's eyes we see the incredible imprisonment of his father for allegedly altering a check for under $20.00, one wee-hours truck-loaded exodus after another to avoid landlords, to the coming of glory and fame as The Look and The Voice and The Shake coalesce, thanks in part to visits to churches on the more soulful side of the tracks. I notice the other reviewers are post-Elvis, yet still have affection for Childress's work in Tender. I saw him early and I saw him late and I am telling you, if you ever cared about Elvis, who he really was and what happened in his formative years, this is a story which you will really enjoy and one which will stay with you long after the reading is done, wishing for more.

What a rocking ride of a book! I have never been particularly interested in Elvis Presley, but this book swept me along because it is such a great story, so well told. Childress does not miss a beat and there is a beat driving it along. The Leroy Kirby character is fresh and very sympathetic. Childress captures the hot, fast blooming of a new sound and star perfectly. I'm sure it helps that even those casually acquainted with Elvis like myself can conjure some of the real life sound and look of the performances that Childress renders so convincingly, but I was impressed nevertheless. The author's song titles and lyrics, which shadow the real ones, are spot-on, and in several cases seem an improvement on the original. Downside? The story lost some of it's oomph towards the end. Of course, the tale is a carbon copy of much of the first half of Elvis' life [as I have learned by refering to Peter Guralnick's Last Train To Memphis (biography)]. Many small incidents and even place names are reproduced, along with the general outline. So there's a nagging feeling that the book should somehow be discounted a bit, with Childress just redressing a heavily borrowed story. But what a job he has done in creating a full-developed, unique character. Reading Guralnick's fine book, I find Leroy Kirby far more interesting. The power of good fiction! I also don't recognize the writing/writer here from the other novel I've read by Childress (V is for Victor - good, but Tender is much better.

Although I grew up in the 1950s, I was largely oblivious to the appeal of Elvis Presley, and I have never considered myself anywhere close to being a "fan" of his. However, Mark Childress completely absorbed my attention and sympathies in this immensely-readable narrative of a fictionalized Elvis. Permeating the initial parts of this novel is a sense of poverty, despair, and, ironically, hope. The young Elvis, disdained and forlorn, knows the solace of an overbearing, but loving, mother, and a sense of his own possibilities through his guitar. The rock star Elvis is overpowering..both in ability and character. I commented repeatedly to my wife that this book rolls at an incredible pace...and that a reader cannot help but be engrossed.

I'm not an Elvis fan but reading Tender, by Mark Childress, made me think of the King in ways I hadn't before. The novel is a closely adapted and fictionalized account of the life of Elvis up until the time he had to join the army. Its really sweet and humanizing and funny.