In Olga Tokarczuk's idea, the tender narrator is a fourth-person voice whose omniscience lets it connect the elements of a world into a single whole, even when others cannot yet see those links. It treats its characters' emotional shifts gently, never judging, only keeping them company as they uncover their fears, longings and desires. And it stays alert to the small, everyday details, so we feel the world it describes as if we were almost inside it. Alicja Pakosz is a tender narrator. Of that I am certain.
The painter
Alicja Pakosz is a young Polish painter of dreamlike, low-voiced pictures, where faces and fragments surface without quite resolving into a story. She works like a tender narrator, accompanying her figures rather than judging them, and her paintings hold more possible meanings than you can count.