Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Love Me Tender

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Love Me Tender by Constance Debré

3 reviews

james1star's review

challenging emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

After hearing some rave reviews towards the end of last year and picking this up, I eagerly put it on my 24 of 2024 list thinking I’d love it. I mean it’s queer French autofiction, something I love, but this was quite disappointing in fairness.

The book starts three years after the mc (author) divorced her (ex)husband Laurent, telling him she’s started seeing women. What ensues is a vicious and horrible custody battle over their young son Paul, with Laurent making things up about her and her friends, and training their son to say bad things about his mum. It is really heartbreaking these sections and seeing all the effort, leaps and hurdles Debré had to overcome to barely see Paul, with supervision, and how the French government was so reluctant to see things from her pov and the inherent injustice in the case. What the book does well is explore motherhood and how mums are perceived/viewed and expected to be or act in certain ways. The mental toll of being separated from your child is important too and how the relationship between mother and son here is examined, she has a lot of love for Paul but at the same time can see the positives of being alone with more freedom - I can see this being a response to the separation but it’s not clear and could be just genuine enjoyment with personally felt a little off and I wouldn’t ever feel like this.

The above is one part of the story, but it’s equally an exploration into Debré rediscovering herself living as a lesbian woman. She starts to have flings with various woman but these don’t ever come to anything and the reasons for this is highlighted - not having the energy, just not wanting anything, and fear of commitment. I found these sections to be fine, they’re a little crass and crude at times but did help to flesh out the book and how Debré spent her days. I think the reason I couldn’t fully enjoy reading this was that our mc was just quite unlikable and we didn’t get all that much personality from it. I found the way she thought about things and people at times was a bit meh. I also didn’t appreciate her (and I believe others too) using the f slur a couple times - not excessive but enough to comment on and for a contemporary book published in 2020 (2022 in English) and with no confrontation it’s just unnecessary. At times the book did read a little like diary entry notes as opposed to a put together novel, a little like she was talking for the sake of it, and was rather messy too. The writing is good, it’s pinpoint and compiled in short, concise chapters which I definitely appreciated but did lack some editing to fully round out what is trying to be said and for what purpose.

On the whole, I think this had some positives and negatives but was underwhelming for my expectations and honestly wouldn’t really recommend - for a French women coming to terms and understanding her sexuality Bouaoui’s All Men Want To Know is far better - but does a decent enough job of exploring the misogyny and homo/lesbophobia in the French government systems. I don’t know if I’ll read more in Debré’s autofiction series, maybe the previous book that was actually translated after this which might me more interesting to me but we’ll just wait and see.

Content Warnings

catandherbooks's review against another edition

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inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

the_literarylinguist's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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