There’s something wrong with Carolanne.
Beth Hetland’s graphic novel Tender tells the story of a woman with #goals: Carolanne lives in a cozy apartment in Chicago, takes the train to her cubicle job, and snuggles with her cat. She gets drinks with the girlies and celebrates their life milestones: engagements, weddings, and pregnancy announcements. Everything’s fine—or at least that’s what it looks like on the outside. But when she is alone, Carolanne struggles with her obsessions and her powerful self-destructive urges.
Tender is ultimately a psychological horror story, but it has a healthy dose of cringe-inducing, sickening body horror. I knew this book would involve pregnancy, and I expected that to play a big role in the body horror element. I was pleasantly surprised that Tender does not fall under the baby-as-parasite trope. The body horror on these pages is upsetting—just how I like it!—but Carolanne’s physical wounds reflect her manipulation and need for control, NOT the ordeal of gestation. She would still endure these injuries even if she were not pregnant. Veteran body horror enthusiasts: you won’t be shocked by the gore, but you’ll be satiated (unlike Carolanne, who never is).
In addition to the graphic (and mostly self-imposed) mutilations, Tender has quiet, eerie moments that don’t directly relate to the main story. Some examples: The sight of a creepy alley next to Carolanne’s building. A friend’s ominous tarot card reading recounted over brunch. A decayed house and hairy stalactites that appear in nightmares. And there’s so much meat. Carolanne delights in cooking and eating flesh, and her meals are often paired with dark frustrations and sinister intentions. These symbols add to the uneasy tone, even when they aren’t directly related to Carolanne’s delusions.
Hetland takes great care to construct and color the book’s drawings. Most of Tender is washed in a placid purplish-blue, but there are pops of pigment that effectively contrast with Carolanne’s cool demeanor, revealing the red-hot anger that bubbles within her. Low-angle perspectives of her scowling face skillfully emphasize the sacrifices she will make to exert influence over others. Panels are neat and tidy, just like she needs her life to be, but in her nightmares—the place she has no control over—the separation between the panels thins and weakens.
The best page of the book shows Carolanne making her husband’s lunch, kissing him goodbye at the door, and then starting on her housework. And then, below those panels, we see these images repeated, but a little smaller. And again, even smaller. And again. And again. It’s Carolanne’s dream to fit into the housewife role, and yet it’s uncanny to see her goals realized, summarized into successively tinier and tinier boxes. This is what she has dreamed of, but as the panels get smaller and smaller on the page, you know that the dream can’t continue like this forever. It’s a microcosm of Carolanne herself: superficial, monomaniacal, and unstable.
Tender is gross, but as I shared earlier, the essence of the story is more psychological horror than body horror. But the psychological horror is unique here; so many of the horror moments in this story take place when she is alone. Her obsessions, her plans, the actions she takes are made more unsettling by how quiet they are. In prose, the tension in these moments would diminish in summaries—but in these pages, we are forced to sit with Carolanne, powerlessly watching the juxtaposition of her public persona and her disturbing motivations. She is manipulative, but others around her don’t see it, so we as readers are the only witnesses to her behavior. It’s a refreshing perspective: Not only are we getting the story from the villain’s POV, but the victims don’t even know they are victims.
So, what’s the cause of Carolanne’s issues? Surely the patriarchy is partly responsible, given her preoccupations with fulfilling the perfect feminine role. Thankfully, Tender isn’t a simplistic allegory. Social media is partly to blame, too—Instagram looms large, metaphorically in Carolanne’s life and literally on the page—but her desires are so enmeshed in everything she does, she would likely be just as obsessed even if social media didn’t exist. Tender offers no diagnosis, no trauma backstory, no malevolent curse that tidily explains her tendencies with a neat little bow. If you need a story to tell you exactly why characters act the way they do, then Tender isn’t for you. If you enjoy reading stories with ambiguity, disappointments, and people making bad choices—you know, like real life—then you might like this book.
If you couldn’t already tell from this review, it’s tough to write about Tender without giving too much away. It becomes clear early on that Carolanne is not the happy young woman she appears to be, but there are details about her journey that I’d rather not spoil. Her story is surprising, tense, and sickening; it is gross and engrossing.
Tender releases March 12, 2024. It is available at most book and comic stores and through the Fantagraphics website.
Stop by the launch party at The Brewed on March 12 at 6pm.
Did you enjoy this post and our coverage of Chicago’s arts scene? Please consider supporting Third Coast Review’s arts and culture coverage by making a donation by PayPal. Choose the amount that works best for you, and know how much we appreciate your support!