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Alison MacLeod Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Alison MacLeod

Alison MacLeod

How to pronounce Alison MacLeod: Mac-loud

Alison MacLeod Biography

Alison MacLeod is the author of three novels – The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels and Unexploded, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013 – and two story collections. She is the joint winner of the Eccles British Library Writer's Award 2016 and was a finalist for the 2017 Governor General's Award. She was Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester until 2018, when she became Visiting Professor to write full-time. She lives in Brighton.

Alison MacLeod's website

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Interview

Alison MacLeod discusses Tenderness, and how she saw the influence of Lady Chatterley's Lover in moving the twentieth century from war and censorship to sensuality and freedom.

Is there significance to the title, Tenderness?

In Lady Chatterley's Lover, the once controversial novel which sits at the heart of my novel, Lady Constance Chatterley says to her lover, the gamekeeper Mellors:

'Shall I tell you what you have that other men don't have, and that will make the future? Shall I tell you?'
'Tell me then, he replied.'
"It's the courage of your own tenderness…'

That unexpected word, 'courage', caught my eye. When, I wondered, is tenderness a courageous thing? During the legendary Old Bailey trial of 1960, a barrister called Richard Du Cann made quick notes in the defence team's court notebooks: 'Tenderness,' he wrote, adding asterisks, 'real tenderness.' I lingered over those three words as if they were a scribbled invocation. Tenderness was D.H. Lawrence's original title for Lady Chatterley, and tenderness was its defining spirit.

Could you say a little about the structure of Tenderness?

As a novel, it spans forty-five years, both world wars and the Cold War, but it's not chronological. Time and space in Tenderness are permeable to both memory and the imagination. There's a weaving of stories and histories, and an unravelling of them. Tenderness has what I think of as an organic structure,...

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Books by this Author

Books by Alison MacLeod at BookBrowse
Tenderness jacket All the Beloved Ghosts jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Alison MacLeod but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Louis Bayard

    Louis Bayard

    Louis Bayard is the critically acclaimed bestselling author of nine historical novels, including Jackie & Me and The Pale Blue Eye, which was adapted into the global #1 Netflix release starring Christian Bale. His articles, ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Tenderness

    Try:
    Jackie & Me
    by Louis Bayard

  • Therese Anne Fowler

    Therese Anne Fowler

    Therese Anne Fowler is the third child and only daughter of a couple who raised their children in Milan, Illinois. An avowed tomboy as a child, Therese protested her grandmother's determined attempts to dress her in ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Tenderness

    Try:
    Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
    by Therese Anne Fowler

We recommend 5 similar authors

View all 5 Read-Alikes

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Top Picks

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In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
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