Finneran, Kathleen 1958(?)-

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FINNERAN, Kathleen 1958(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1958, in St. Louis, MO. Education: Graduated from Washington University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—6324 Westminster Place, St. Louis, MO 63130. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Houghton Mifflin Company, 222 Berkeley St., Boston, MA 02116-3674. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Author.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Missouri Arts Council Writer's Biennial Award, 1990; Whiting Writers' Award for "emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise," Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, for The Tender Land: A Family Love Story, 2001; Guggenheim fellowship, 2003.

WRITINGS:

The Tender Land: A Family Love Story (memoir), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Kathleen Finneran's The Tender Land: A Family Love Story is a tribute to her Irish-Catholic family—her hard-working father, her devout mother, and her four siblings. Most of all, the book is about the loss the family suffered when, just after Christmas in 1982, her younger brother Sean committed suicide at the age of fifteen. Book reviewer Beth Kephart wrote that Finneran "yields an exquisite portrait of the things that sustain one large, religious family before and after an unbearable loss." Library Journal contributor Dianna White called The Tender Land "an absorbing and thoughtful memoir and an outstanding first book."

"Sadness isn't portrayed with self-pity in this book but as a family malady, a virulent strain that baffles and sometimes embarrasses its afflicted members," noted Carolyn Alessio in Chicago's Tribune Books. Finneran's grandfather shot himself, and the author and her mother both suffered from depression, as did Sean's younger sister Kelly, who also attempted suicide. Perhaps most disturbing is the way that apparent happiness could mask dark despair in the Finneran family. Sean was a gentle and loving boy, an athlete and excellent student, but after he died from swallowing his father's heart pills, the family read in his suicide note of the dark depression, self-loathing, and sense of worthlessness that had engulfed him.

"And Finneran doesn't hide the embarrassing and humiliating sides of her story," wrote David Guy in the Washington Post Book World. On the night her brother took his life, the author was losing her virginity to a man she had met in a donut shop. Finneran discloses that she was an overweight child and sometimes felt her parents were uncaring. She also writes that she took as a lover the woman who had comforted her, in spite of her mother's warnings. As Sarah Chinn of the Advocate reported, "The book 'is a sort of coming out for me,' according to Finneran—the first time two of her siblings learned about her lesbian life. But given that her sexuality and her experience of Sean's death are so closely intertwined, she explained, 'I felt like I couldn't totally write the book honestly and leave it out.'"

Guy summarized the memoir as "painful to read but ultimately triumphant." Booklist reviewer GraceAnne A. DeCandido remarked that it is "essentially a love story of a family whose offhand tenderness and care for one another cannot be obliterated, not by depression, not even by death." Concurring, a Publishers Weekly reviewer added that the The Tender Land is "unforgettable in its restraint and quiet beauty."