Tender Is the Night

In “Tender Is the Night,” Fitzgerald provides us with a harsh look at human nature and relationships through the lives of three unforgettable characters. The story is told from these three different characters, the Divers, Dick and Nicole and Rosemary. The story shifts between the three persons to slowly reveal the surreal relationship between Dick and Nicole and their sad lives. “Tender Is the Night” is less dramatic and much slower than “The Great Gatsby,” but eventually much more satisfying. The characters are more alive, realistic and some scenes are truly haunting. It’s a sobering, harsh and disturbing look at human nature along with the downfall of a man into despair.

I had mixed feelings about Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I enjoyed reading about the romance between Nicole and Dick, and then between Rosemary and Dick, and I found that I cared deeply for the characters. I was involved in their lives and felt concern and sorrow for them. Despite these aspects which I enjoyed, there was much of the novel which I felt to be irrelevant and uninteresting. I didn't understand the significance of the story of Abe North's difficulty with the law, the problems between the Divers and a remarried Mary North, and the arrest of Mary North and Lady Sibly-Biers. I was also disappointed in the way Fitzgerald chose to resolve the story. Dick was my favorite character throughout the novel but it seemed in the end that he was sucked dry by Nicole, used and abandoned by Rosemary, and made an outcast by all his friends. I felt that Tender is the Night was weak in terms of historical content. There was little discussion of World War I and the novel didn't create a clear picture of its aftermath. I also had a mixed reaction with regard to Fitzgerald's style of writing. His description was interesting and creative but I was often confused as to the character speaking, the passage of time, and the exact aspects of an event. I finished the novel uncertain about whether or not events had actually occurred and not completely understanding the motivation behind much of the story. Overall I found Tender is the Night to be entertaining to read but at times difficult to understand.

When I read this novel, I felt as if everything else I'd ever read was garbage. This is because Scott Fitzgerald had a way with words that was beyond compare. I would stop myself and reread pages because I couldn't believe that what I'd just read was so beautifully written. I never do this with novels! Beyond that, this is an incredible story involving breaking a taboo that has a frightful attraction rate. Dick Driver is a psychiatrist. Nicole is his wealthy, beautiful, younger patient.

This is not a story about Dick's abusing Nicole as her therapist. Dick saves Nicole and marries her even though he is warned by his own mentor that such a relationship never works. It becomes quite clear as the story continues to unfold that Dick is the one paying an exorbitant price from his marrying Nicole whereas Nicole is thriving. The alcohol and parties among the jet set abound as they usually do in a Fitzgerald novel, set in the 1920s. By all means read this novel. I can guarantee that you will hold onto it for the rest of your life.

Visit my blog with link given on my profile page here or use this phonetically given URL (livingasseniors dot blogspot dot com). Friday's entry will always be weekend entertainment recs from my 5 star the store reviews in film, tv, books and music. These are very heavy on buried treasures and hidden gems. My blogspot is published on Monday, Wednesday & Friday.

The renowned success of The Great Gatsby (also an exceptional book) often overshadows the brilliance of Tender is the Night. The later being Fitzgerald's semi-autobiographical masterpiece that gives the reader a glimpse into the writer's frame of mind and personal struggles. "Tender" is a true testament to the author's talent and arguably is his most important literary effort.
Dick Diver is a young psychiatrist; a follower of Freud and Jung who is working his way up in the field of mental health medicine. He is intelligent, handsome, altruistic, and an overachiever. Dick falls in love and marries the beautiful, wealthy Nicole Warren who also happens to be his patient. Dick and Nicole start out living the high life. They travel to exotic locations and mingle with aristocrats. All the while Dick establishes a successful private practice with the help of Nicole's money and becomes a well-respected and sought-after physician. But soon the happy front the Diver's display to the world crumbles. Nicole's mental problems begin to resurface and Dick becomes involved with a young Hollywood starlet. These events trigger a domino of disappointments and downfalls.
Anyone who has studied F. Scott Fitzgerald the man will no doubt see that Tender is the Night mirrors his own life with his wife Zelda. Fitzgerald, a perfectionist in his own career worked tirelessly to establish himself. Meanwhile, he and Zelda traveled the globe, attended parties, consumed alcohol, lived extravagantly, and carelessly spent all their money before Zelda slipped into insanity leaving Scott to pick up the scattered pieces of his broken life. The character of Dick Diver grows to become cynical and is left feeling he is a failure. Sadly, six years after the publication of this book, Fitzgerald himself died prematurely believing he was a failure and destined for literary obscurity.
It would be impossible for me to do justice in describing the splendor of Fitzgerald's prose. His passages are emotionally sweeping and his words strum along as rhythmically as fine music. If you have time for only one book this year, make a wise choice and consider Tender is the Night.

In many ways this books is less complicated and easier to understand if we go back and look at Fitzgerald's own notes that he recorded in his famous ledger pror to writing the novel. The biographer Mathew Bruccoli does an excellent job of pulling together many of the details surrounding the life and the works of Fitzgerald (FSF).

The present novel was written more thatn 10 years after his breakthrough novel "This Side of Paradise." His marriage had soured, his wife Zelda was hosplitized with mental ilness, and he was living in Baltimore. He needed a novel to demonstrate that he was still a force and he wrote this two part book with the time flashback as that vehicle.

The novel opens in 1925, set on the Riviera, and is narrated by a young actress Rosemary who deveops and attraction to a married Dick Diver. In his notes, he says that Dick looks like him, FSF; Dick's wife looks like Marlene Dietrich; Rosemary looks like the young actress Lois Moran. He had met the latter in Hollywood while screenwriting and had developed an attachment to her. He was 30 while Moran was just 18, ages similar to Dick and Rosemary in the novel. Although nothing happened, this caused quite a stir with his real wife Zelda who started a fire in their apartment in protest. The Dick Diver character is based on a Baltimore doctor that was treating FSF for his alcoholism. Those are the people that create a framework for the novel.

The novel reflects the complexities of FSF's own life, the failure of his marriage, his driking, the decline of his career, and his attraction to, or distraction by, Lois Moran.

The novel is divided into two parts. Part I opens on a beach on the Riviera in 1925 and describes the chance meeting between the Divers (a married couple Dick and Nicole) and the young actress Rosemary. She is attracted to Dick, but nothing happens. In part II, the story re-starts in 1917 without Rosemary and we trace the meeting and marriage of the Diver couple. One reson for the two parts is to introduce the time fahsback, that FSF thought would make the novel a lot more sophisticated, and it would quiet down some of his critics that thought that his writing ideas were too simple.

Rosemary's role is primarily to throw the weak Dick off his marriage, get him frustrated since they never consumate, make him think of other women, so he starts to have these side affairs and ruin his marriage, independent of whether or not she comes back into the story.

The core of the story is about a weak man distracted by drink and women, as perhaps FSF was as well. In real life his wife never recovers from her mental illness, and died in a fire in a home in the early 1940s.

The story is a bit backwards compared to FSF's real life. In real life FSF went into seclusion on the Riviera to finish Gatsby. Zelda had the affair, not him, while he was writing. So it is a slight role reversal here. Her affair opened the door I suppose for him to have an affiar, and since he went to Hollywood often as a screen writer, there might have been something going on there but probably not with the original distraction, Lois.

"Tender is the Night" from Keat's "Ode to a Nightingale". This is a poem that wouldmake FSF cry, every time he read it.

Excellent novel, and highly recommend.

I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night" (1934) following a recent online discussion on the store's discussion board in which a number of good the store reviewers offered their thoughts on the book. I am please to note many fine reviews on this site as well.

"Tender is the Night" is a story of part of America's "Lost Generation" in the period following WW I. Most of the story is set on the French Riviera in the 1920s with a large cast of wealthy, dissipated and idle Americans with little to do with themselves. The book tells of the fall of Dick Diver, a promising and idealistic young American psychiatrist. As an intern in Zurich, Dick had married a beautiful wealthy young American woman, Nichole Warren, who had been his patient. Nichole had severe and lasting psychiatric issues resulting from sexual abuse by her father. While on the Riviera, several years into the marriage, Dick is attracted to a callow 18-year old American movie actress, Rosemary Hoyt. Although he resists Rosemary's advances at the time, her memory stays with him. She and Dick have a brief affair a few years later. Dick ultimately sees her as shallow. By that time, his life has dissipated through drink, idleness, problems with Nichole, and the corrupting effect of Nichole's money. Nichole leaves Dick, and he returns to the States for a lonely, wasted life. It is all very sad.

I found the story effectively organized and told. The opening scenes take place on the French Riviera with Dick seemingly at the height of his powers as a socialite and budding medical writer. After an extended opening, the story doubles back to Dick's life in Zurich and has fateful courtship of Nichole. We then witness Dick Diver's inexorable deterioration, alcoholism, and degeneracy, and the break-up of his marriage. The writing is eloquent and spare, with good characterizations of mostly unappealing people and pictures of places. We see the rootlessness of a class of Americans after the great War and the corrupting effects of money and idleness. Dick Diver's story, I thought was sad and sentimental rather than tragic. There is little of the hero about him.

"Tender is the Night" is the story of wandering lives, lost innocence, and the waste of human potential. In some ways, the book reminded me of the writings of the Beats, following WW II. It is a 20th Century American book, well worth knowing.

Robin Friedman

High flying, fast living F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) attained great commercial and critical fame early in life--and then began a rapid fall into a ferocious alcoholism. In 1925 THE GREAT GATSBY, now regarded as his masterpiece and often described as "the great American novel," was published to only mildly enthusiastic reviews and sold poorly; in order to fund the lifestyle to which he had grown accustomed, Fitzgerald set aside his next book length project and turned to short stories and the occasional bout of "writing for Hollywood."

Although Fitzgerald began to formulate ideas for TENDER IS THE NIGHT as early as 1925, the project was slow to take form and was not published until 1934--by which time it had become a reflection of Fitzgerald's stormy marriage to the equally high flying, fast living Zelda Sayre, who gradually sank into insanity and was permanently institutionalized by the early 1930s. Originally published in serial form in Scribner's Magazine, it received mixed reviews, and when it was published as a novel it did not prove the great commercial success Fitzgerald hoped. It was the last novel he completed before his 1940 death.

The story is set in Europe, where the Fitzgeralds themselves lived through much of the 1920s, and begins with Rosemary, a very young woman who has recently jolted to fame and fortune as an actress in silent film. Beautiful but in many respects innocent, Rosemary vacations on the Riviera--where she makes the acquaintance of Dick and Nicole Diver, an incredibly wealthy, exceptionally attractive couple who seem to be the height of all the modern era has to offer. Rosemary quickly subcums to Dick Diver's immeasurable charm and falls in love with him, but Nick is determinedly bound to Nicole, as much from responsibility as love. Nicole's apparent flawlessness is a facade. Dick is a psychiatrist; his wife, Nicole, is also his patient. She is insane.

Fitzgerald was often accused of writing about rich and pretty but trivial people. In one sense this is true, but in Fitzgerald's work the shiny surface is precisely that, a false front that the characters present to the world in order to maintain both their social standing and self-image. As the novel moves back and forward in time, we see how Dick has been "bought" by Nicole's family and how he is repeatedly torn between love for Nicole as a husband and care for her as a patient so that--even as Nicole begins a final recovery--he begins his own destruction, sucked dry by the endless personal and professional compromises required of him. Increasingly dark in tone, TENDER IS THE NIGHT is not so much disillusioning as it is ultimately, painfully nhilistic.

Fitzgerald seemed to regard TENDER IS THE NIGHT as both his most personal and his favorite work, and there are few who would not regard it as a masterpiece. Even so, it is very much a flawed masterpiece, occasionally problematic to a point at which it snaps the reader out of the very reality it attempts to create, most often due to Fitzgerald's own authorial self-indulgence. That said, the characters and their situations are not always as convincing as one could wish and the structure of the novel is occasionally muddy. And yet--

Even with these glaring issues running throughout the novel, TENDER IS THE NIGHT is the sort of book that you think you will not finish and then suddenly find yourself on the last page. Whereas THE GREAT GATSBY tended to focus on the mask, TENDER IS THE NIGHT focuses on the face beneath it, and the result is uniquely powerful. You care about the Divers and even though you sense their ultimate fate you, like they themselves, fight against it. It has moments of brilliance as powerful and often more so than any other novel of the first half of the 20th Century. Strongly recommended.

GFT, the store Reviewer

Fitzgerald never grows old, whether I'm revisiting THE GREAT GATSBY or reading another of his novels for the first time, in this instance, TENDER IS THE NIGHT. His ability to deliver on big themes and his use of the elements of imaginative writing--symbolism, character, conflict, setting, dialogue, narrative and plot--improves every time I read him.

NIGHT is a rangy novel depicting a time, place and its people: the expatriot ("Europeanized") Americans who habituated Europe after World War I, trying to come to grips with the turbulent speed of modernity and an escalating sense that life has lost meaning. Fitzgerald's community clings to exclusive French beaches and cliff-top villas, spinning around its own royalty, Dick and Nicole Divers, whose parties are to die for. This crowd lives for the night when everything is fun and the liquor flows. The bright light of day and what it can reveal is not always so kind. Fitzgerald charges the novel with melodrama and tragedy, but he also gives free reign to the wry wit, pranks and mores of this desperate crowd. Someone else might abridge some of that, but it would be a loss. It is an important statement on the early 20th century American experience and throws the role of the individual into remarkable relief.

Charles Scribner III, descendant of the book's original publisher, offers a brief but engaging historical introduction that speaks of Fitzgerald's long commitment to producing this work as Zelda fell deeper into mental illness, his own conviction that it was his best and how his peers reacted to it. It's a non-spoiler of an introduction and should not be overlooked.

In a Swiss sanatorium above lake Zürich, Dr Richard (Dick) Diver meets a fascinating young patient, Nicole Warren. Nicole suffers from Divided Personality at its acute down-hill phase which translates in her fear of men because she was the victim of incest after her mother's death.

Nicole's state improves after some time at the clinic and Richard marries her. They move to the French Riviera where they live in the glamour provided by Nicole's family money but soon their luck runs out.

This novel is Fitzgerald's most personal one if one considers that his own wife Zelda became increasingly troubled with mental illness in the 1930s and so the story of Dick Diver and his schizophrenic wife Nicole shows the pain that the author went through himself. It is the moving account of the collapse of a marriage and an attempt to diagnose the sickness and destruction that money breeds. Dick's final loneliness in the novel reflects Fitzgerald's own dive into drink and despair.

I read "Gatsby" and was awed by Fitzgerald's ability to both describe the 1920's and to draw his readers into that postwar period. His characters felt real to me. So, I couldn't wait to read Tender is the Night. "Tender" seems to reveal more about Fitzgerald personal pain than anything else. His novel elaborately blames Nicole for Dick's emotional decay. To me, this story line just doesn't bear close scrutiny. Dick's behavior is controlling,habitually deceitful and at times misogynistic. Time after time Dick control's Nicole's actions and refuses to allow her to even discuss her viewpoint. Nicole's behavior is unbalanced but is it schizophrenic?
It's very revealing that a 28 year old man would fall in love with a 16 year old girl. Later, when Nicole has grown up a bit, Dick falls in and out of love with Rosemary, a very child-like 18 year old.
Granted, women's rights were along way off in 1925 the year Fitzgerald began writing Tender is the Night, but Dick seems more in charge of Nicole's life than seems warranted by either the prevailing culture or by Nicole's illness.
I'd say that Fitzgerald unconsciously revealed his own role in his decaying marriage and like most folks tried to point the finger elsewhere.

Fitzgerald was a supreme talent, and he showed what he was capable of with The Great Gatsby...but Tender is the Night lacks direction and inspiration. (I read the restored version, so my chronology may differ from other readers'.)

The plot is a bit scatter-shot and uneven, with a very sweaty ending (for a slice-of-lifer, many developments come across as factitious rather than organic), but the writing is still unmistakably that of a master. Numerous sentences stick with the reader, and Fitzgerald's facility with the phrase causes me no end of admiration.

However, the air-tight perfection of Gatsby is noticeably lacking. (I know: they can't all be as good as Gatsby...but the comparison is natural, and leaves Night far behind.)

Tender is the Night is ranked #28 on the MLA 100, which puts it ahead of some better stuff, but I can't quibble too much with the novel's placement. It's virtuoso writing by a literary titan, and definitely should be read.

Tender is the Night is a somewhat lengthy, meandering sort of novel. Its facination comes from this very obscurity; a tightly written mystery-murder(The Great Gatsby) it is not. I highly recommend this book for its vivid portrayal of Diver's complexly layered relationships; with Nicole his wife, and with the budding starlet, Rosemary.
The author skillfully shuffles in the minor characters as well. FitzGerald's observations about the psychology between women and men /Americans and Europeans is ultra keen. His father's death, Abe North's death, his and Rosemary's quick but temporary liason, the fight with the Police in Rome, the illness of Mr. Warren, his parting with Franz and Kaethe, the antagonism between Baby and himself, the mental and emotional drain of Nicole's affliction, and his drinking... portray the minor tragedies that constitute life.
FitzGerald tells his story to us better than any other 20th Century American writer could hope to, and in a lyrical style that keeps the reader spellbound.

Tender Is The Night is the second novel I have read by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I thought that after The Great Gatsby that I would continue experiencing such excellence by this novel. I am so glad I did. This novel made me feel like I was watching a silent film. I could just see Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. walking along a veranda along the Mediterranean Sea. I could feel the sea breeze and smell the air. What's is more is that I felt like I was there along with the characters as if I were in with their group of devil may care expatriates. I could truly see the strength of the title in the story. I could also see the parallel of Zelda's mental instability in this novel. I loved it and wholly recommend it if you want to feel transported to the early twentieth century or if you just want to know that even the rich have problems too.

It is presumptuous of me to try to "review" F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the premiere authors in American Literature. But, having recently read an eye-opening biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, wherein I learned that F. Scott had purloined many of Zelda's writings verbatim to use in his own novels, I felt compelled to reread this work.
I always considered "Tender Is the Night" to be Fitzgerald's finest work, unlike most Fitzgerald scholars, who lean toward "The Great Gatsby." I am no scholar, nor do I pretend to be, but to me, "Tender Is the Night" was always the most mature and most tragic--and showed a greater insight into Fitzgerald's psyche than perhaps he meant to show.
The thinly veiled story of his tragic marriage to Zelda, the story takes place in all their real-life stomping grounds, from the Riviera to Paris to Switzerland--with a few side trips to the United States. In the story, Dick Diver, a prominent psychiatrist, is the protagonist. His wife, the beautiful, fey and often mad Nicole, is Zelda. As they aimlessly flit from place to place (the Fitzgeralds, and thus the fictional Divers, were the original "beautiful people"), the scholarly and noble (oh, so noble!) Dr. Diver begins to disintegrate under the weight of caring for a mentally ill but outwardly quite normal wife. In the end,it is he, not her, who is destroyed.
There is a lot of anger in this book, and still more, almost unbearable pathos. I still think it is brilliant--a work of art in words. And I found, as I was reading, that I didn't really care which words were Zelda's and which were Scott's. As in real life, they formed a tragic whole--bent on destroying themselves and each other--and this book shows Scott's clear-eyed insight into that fact.
The art is the tragedy--and the tragedy is the art. My admiration of F. Scott Fitzerald, and the lovely and lost Zelda, remains intact.

'Tender is the Night' is one of F Scott Fitzgeralds better known books and the first one of his I read. It is a powerful story of two people (Dick and Nicole) loving each other for the wrong reasons and whose love takes a course neither truly wants, but can't seem to move away from. This is set in the roaring twenties amidst the hedonistic lifestyles of the aristocracy and you can imagine the times and places perfectly. Told in a deceptively simple style, it has great depth in it's story telling and a way of making you feel as deeply as the characters. It may not have the most positive of endings, but I like it all the more for this reason, as it is truer to real life. A beautifully written book to be enjoyed again and again.

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i read The Great Gatsby 7 years ago when i was eighteen and thought it flat and completely uninteresting. So i decided to read Tender is the Night and was not expecting much. But seriously, I had no idea Fitzgeral could write with such depth and beaty. Almost every paragraph in this book is enjoyable, and some of the writing is just as breathtaking, and as origianl and pure as basically anyone...
Interesting to me was the fact that this book reminded me of some of Nabokov's books that were also written in the 20's and 30's (particularly King, Queen, Knave and Glory). Perhaps it is the priviledged, European feel that Tender has, or maybe the painful lyricism of some of the passages, but either way he has earned the highest compliment by being compared to Nabokov. I believe I am the first to make this observation.
This book, like On the Road, will have moments of energetic optimism and loveoflife while at the same time harboring a sense of impending doom and finality. This book will break your heart. It is just beautiful and sad and everything a book should be.

The Great Gatsby is without a single doubt one of the greatest American novels ever written and has well deserved its position as a permanent fixture in American literarture classes. Everyone and their sister had read The Great Gatsby. I personally loved it, but that was before I read Tender is the Night. It touched my heart and got under my skin an infinity more deeply than The Great Gatsby. It is a work that cries with hopelessness, loneliness, and broken dreams.
Tender is the Night chronicles the downfall and eventual ruin of Dick Diver, a smart, handsome pshychiatrist. He has everything in life going for him. He has friends, beautiful children, money, ability, and so much love for his wife Nicole. But this idealistic life can not long endure and Dick's sparkling world soon begins to unravel. Nicole turns out to be a schizophrenic. Though her mental illness has been dormant for years, it begins to resurface, destroying Dick's confidence, optimism, his marriage, and his very life.
Tender is the Night is almost painful in its emotion. Fitzgerald seems to have filled the very pages of the book full of his tears. As this book was written, his own wife Zelda institutionalized as a schizophrenic, making this novel semi-autobiographical. This work is so astounding simply because of the feeling it reveals straight from the heart of its author, making it one of the most intimate portraits I have ever read. Tender is the Night is an absolute masterpiece.

It feels weird writing a long review of a classic novel. There are probably a thousand reviews online, so I'm going to take a different approach and throw out one of my all time favorite quotes:

"But to be included in Dick Diver’s world for a while was a remarkable experience: people believed he made special reservations about them, recognizing the proud uniqueness of their destinies, buried under the compromises of how many years."

I just want to add that it's the reader who is "included in Dick Diver's world", and it is indeed a remarkable experience.

Fresh from seeing the latest film version of 'The Great Gatsby' last month, I suddenly was filled with an anxious, eager curiosity to learn more about the "flapper era" of the 1920s and to read a book from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hence I bought this novel.

"Tender is the Night" is divided into 3 books. Book 1 came off as overwrought, mawkish, and disjointed. Most of it, I confess, was rather hard-going because the main characters (e.g., Dick & Nicole Diver, and Rosemary, who developed a instant, lovelorn attraction for Dick) seemed devoid of any real being. They struck me as awkward actors thrown together on a stage --- a beach on the Riviera in 1925 --- to play out their lives together. Their interactions struck me as contrived. Only the following words from Fitzgerald in Book 1 helped to put things more in perspective for me:

"... When the producer went to New York they went too. Thus Rosemary had passed her entrance examinations. With the ensuing success and the promise of comparative stability that followed, Mrs. Speers had felt free to tacitly imply tonight:

" 'You were brought up to work --- not especially to marry. Now you've found your first nut to crack and it's a good nut --- go ahead and put whatever happens down to experience. Wound yourself or him --- whatever happens it can't spoil you because economically you're a boy, not a girl.' "(p. 40)

"It was hard to know where to go. He glanced about the house that Nicole had made, that Nicole's grandfather had paid for. He owned only his work house and the ground on which it stood. Out of three thousand a year and what dribbled in from his publications he paid for his clothes and personal expenses, for cellar charges, and for Lanier's education, so far confined to a nurse's wage. Never had a move been contemplated without Dick's figuring his share. Living rather ascetically, travelling third-class when he was alone, with the cheapest wine, and good care of his clothes, and penalizing himself for any extravagances, he maintained a qualified financial independence..." p. 170

Books 2 & 3 provide the reader with some glimpses into Dick and Nicole's personal histories, how they met in Switzerland in the midst of the First World War (Dick was her psychiatrist, who later agreed to take on her case), and the subsequent disintegration of their marriage. Here Fitzgerald has developed more of a coherent novel, with a few eloquent, and pithy sentences, which he put to good effect:

"... for Nicole the years slipped away by clock and calendar and birthday, with the added poignance of her perishable beauty."

"... The people she liked, rebels mostly, disturbed her and were bad for her --- she sought in them the vitality that had made them independent or creative or rugged, sought in vain --- for their secrets were buried deep in childhood struggles they had forgotten They were more interested in Nicole's exterior harmony and charm, the other face of her illness..."

"... She led a lonely life owning Dick who did not want to be owned." (p. 180)

Yet, notwithstanding all that, taken as a whole, this novel, while not one of the worst I've yet read, is a lightweight. Its value comes from the fact that Fitzgerald largely based it on his own troubled marriage with Zelda (who herself had spent about 15 months in a Swiss sanatorium for schizophrenia).

This edition is F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1934 original novel. There is a cheaper edition, but I noticed reviews saying it had spelling and punctuation mistakes, and even missing text. So I was glad I bought this edition which is free from errors and well laid out. There are contemporary photographs between chapters which are unique to this version as well.

If you haven't read Tender is the Night before, it's a longer and more challenging work than The Great Gatsby, more ambitious and more rewarding in my mind. You can see the influence of Sigmund Freud and notions of madness. I would recommend you Google 'Hemingway's Letter to F Scott Fitzgerald' to see what another great writer thought about this classic book.

The first 100 pages of this book were vey disappointing. The characters seemed shallow and the plot, seemingly non-existent. There were many times that I was going to not finish the book. I thought that Rosemary was the shallowest character, even more shallow than Daisy in Great Gatsby. I also was not intruiged by the rich, careless lives of Dick and Nicole Diver, or that of their multitude of non-descript friends. And then, after the hotel scenec, it all made sense. I was amazed that Fitzgerald could tie all of his characters to the plot, as well as bring to life the deep problems of Nicole and Dick. After the first hundred pages (which took me nearly 3 weeks to get through) I read the last two hundred in three days. The demise of Dick and the subsequent rise of Nicole was quite captivating. Fitzgerald didn't demean his readers by telling them every bit of information . . . he let the readers draw there own conclusions as to the plight of the characters. Really, a very intelligent piece of work, even more so than Gatsby. In some ways this book felt like something John Steinbeck could have wrote (my favorite author), so if you enjoy his books, or Fitz's Great Gatsby, this is a definite read.

Tender is the Night is a wonderful story, I stayed up until 0230 reading it last night.
Devin is on a quest to find the arsonist that killed his FBI partner a year before. He leaves the FBI to pursue the identity with the help of Kate Calloway. Sparks fly and they find the arsonist, and are able to put his mind at rest.
I didn't see the arsonist until the review! Lots of drama.
I loved it.

Why does Dick and Nicole's marriage disintigrate? Because Dick is haunted by his loss of integrity for marrying Nicole as much for love as for money? Because Dick, above all else, needed to be needed, and as Nicole's mental health improves after his many years of care and attention, he is no longer needed as much? As evidenced by his post-divorce aimlessness and professional failure, was Nicole his only true life's work? And the descent into alcoholism and Dick's preoccupation with Rosemary, the "other woman" - why?

After much reflection I concluded that, not only did all of the foregoing factors contribute, but another factor exists, a great overarching truth for which neither Dick nor Nicole are responsible, and which Fitzgerald so delicately articulates. That truth is that we simply get older, and as youth recedes, so does starry-eyed optimism. A man and a woman become familiar to one another; their marriage routine. And a man like Dick, who thrives on attention and excitement, becomes trapped and miserable in the commonplace. He self-medicates through drink and reaffirms a flattering sexual self-image through the attention of a much younger, adoring woman, even if he eventually loses her, too. Ultimately, Dick is a caged animal who must have out - for what uncertain destiny is beside the point.

TENDER IS THE NIGHT is, perhaps, the most psychologically complex novel I have ever read. Fitzgerald captures the ephemeral ebb and flow of human emotion within the context of the closed circle of intimacy with stunning accuracy, realism, and beauty. Apart from the immediate plot concerning Dick and Nicole, TENDER IS THE NIGHT is also a vivid portrayal of Fitzgerald's generation and stratum of society abroad in the 1920s. In this way it is similar to Flaubert's SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION: both are love stories set against backgrounds of social upheaval wrought by a new prosperity, replete with hustlers, strivers, and posers, all on the make.

In an the store review of James Joyce's ULYSSES a few years ago, I criticized Fitzgerald's work for being "dated". Well, it is; and TENDER IS THE NIGHT is, in many ways, dated; but it was a product of its time, and it is easy to be critical about a preceding generation's values, now discredited. That said, however, Fitzgerald's preoccupation with wealth and class nevertheless borders on the pathological. And, unless it is merely to illustrate his characters' limitations, his tiresome Anglophilia and alarming antipathy toward (of all people!) the Italians is pure racism. I often found myself thinking that Fitzgerald was a far better writer than his characters deserved.

Insofar as lanuage, vocabulary and style, TENDER IS THE NIGHT is demanding. Read it slowly and re-read passages you fail to fully absorb on the first go-round. Fitzgerald's vocabulary is sophisticated, so use a dictionary. Finally, this book is ethereal: it is poetry and must be approached as such.

I don't see how anyone could give Fitzgerald's monumental imaginative world anything less than a "5" for its sheer density AS a world. Throughout the book, I also felt deeply moved by the plight of Dr. Dick Diver, who certainly fits all definitions I've ever seen of a tragic hero...and to some degree, of Nicole, who is not portrayed as a person with quite the painful awareness Dick has of the complexity of life.
While in awe of the scope and concrete detail of the book, the power of its arc of downfall of a basically noble character (most of the time), and its accurate perceptions of the complexities of intimate human relationsips, I felt at times that this was something of a "novel of manners", revealing one transitory emotional state after another in its characters, with no clue of any solid bedrock underneath.
I also felt that though the novel focused on Dick's sad end, or, more accurately, disappearance "off the map" of Nicole's consciousness, I can scarcely imagine the hell that will await her as wife of Tommy Barbot, the professional mercenary, and a cold-blooded character in whom I could not see a single redeeming quality, or even qualities that might have earned his early membership in Dick's "inner circle" of friends.
I find Fitzgerald both a gifted with genius and, at times, exasperatingly superficial.

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Mr. Fitzgerald, excuse me for this brief criticism of your masterwork, "Tender is the Night." To begin, TITN is a articulate, beautifully detailed work. Fitzgerald brilliantly mantains a languid, imagery and motif-filled text. Dick Diver, Rosemary and Nicole are each real people, in stunning contrast to the superficial emotions and problems of Gatsby, Nick and Daisy. Overall, the book is captivating, the characters intoxicating. Yet it was the poor flow of the book that annoyed me. Gaps in time, unartful character and plot development, and inconsistancy in chapter breaks led me to be shocked at his lack of care for what could have been his most amazing piece. Pehaps the themes struck too close to home or its magnitude became too intense for F. Scott Key. Regardless, this book makes for a great vacation read as it is one infinitely more complex and deep than "Gatsby".

The characters have no depth and there is not much resembling a plot of any kind. I had aborted this novel a year ago around page 70, came back to it last week and made it to around page 180, but couldn't take it anymore. When a book is this painful to get through, and I have no idea in hell what is going on, understanding at the same time that if I did I most likely wouldn't care because the one-dimensional characters are so paper thin and uninteresting, it's time to move on.

Or: Of Love and Loss: the Sacrifice for Gain. *Tender is the Night,* F. Scott Fitzgerald's tragic fourth novel, shimmers with palpable autobiographical pain; it is catharsis, plain as day, for the regrets and reduction of a personal life, and the era that encompassed it. Fragmentary yet fully contained, brilliantly lucid as it describes the derailment of sanity, via incest-trauma or the alcoholic haze - *Tender is the Night* flows like a tone poem, vividly capturing the illusions and sickened foundations of its flawed protagonists, and the escapist existence in which they dwell. Herein lay ghosts, drifting through splendor, oblivious until it is too late, and then insensate still, crippled by self-imposed restrictions: the patterns of denial, dissipation and dream-death.
The novel concerns the relationship between married couple Dick and Nicole Diver, the husband a promising young psychiatrist with obscure goals about published research, the wife a fragile flower soiled early in life, the `damaged goods' he takes on to teach, heal, and subconsciously reap in turn. At first, presented through the innocent gaze of child-actress Rosemary, the Divers seem like the quintessence of their sophisticated era: clever, classy, both elegant and subtly sensual, people so comfortable with themselves as to avoid the games and struts of the current `season.' Young, restful, in love with each other and life in general, the Divers exhibit the ideal of the American Dream, if expatriat-ed from American soil . . . but the cracks begin to show, one by one, until the cultivated artifice is shattered and the sickness beneath exposed: the author therein chronicles the dissolution of this relationship, from beginning to end, drawing significant parallel from both his own life and the turbulent age in which he lived.
*Tender is the Night*: A requiem for a dream. Certainly the fallout with his wife Zelda influenced the novel's course; but I believe there is more to it. F. Scott Fitzgerald, and by extension his work, was/is inescapably tied with the exuberant façade of the Jazz Era, an era defined (at least in the socialite sense) by its splendor and waste, its heedless optimism blind of cost. And though Scott basked in the cradle of this opulent "season," the author seething beneath the fly-by-night exterior could not help but be keenly aware of its follies and hypocrisies: his novels and short stories savagely depict the inward condemnation he felt. But unlike earlier efforts, this, Scott's last completed novel, was composed between 1925 and 1934, and the disintegration of the roaring 20's into the dust-bowl Depression of the 30's seems to me clearly represented in the progression from *Tender's* first to third books - the illusion has crashed and there is no regaining it, despite the determined dissipative efforts contrary. This is a personal impression, one I read between the lines; and even considering the fact that Fitz lived overseas and that the events of this novel occurred almost completely in France and Switzerland, the metaphor is quite stark - to my mind, at least.
A more literal analysis, in any regard, clearly shows the price of atrophy, lost ambition and alcoholism; despite the `happy' resolution to Nicole and Dick's co-dependency, the pain of loss - on both a psychic and physical level - is harrowingly delineated. Having recently been in the position of Dick Diver - that is, faced with the temptation of sacrificing personal goals in order to `save' another from the manic-spiral - I can sympathize with the capitulation of his dreams for more immediate concerns: genetic-inspired attraction as strong a demand as the survival-instinct drive. Yet Nicole's rise, surmounting both the Father and the Father Figure in her quest for identity, is just as poignant. The antagonist here is simply _weakness_, and how it can be shared to disastrous result.
To define the myriad qualities of *Tender is the Night* into simplistic buzz-word recommendation: this is a haunting, occasionally stunning work, with beautifully lyrical prose and well-defined conflict, interspersed with casual insights into the urges/constructs of human reality. All in all it's a fantastic read, and perhaps my personal favorite of F. Scott Fitzgerald's work; (...)
Highly recommended.

Unarguably, Fitzgerald's greatest work will remain The Great Gatsby. The theme of being unable to escape one's legacy is so universal that it's no surprise the work shows up on so many best-of lists. But another one of his novels, Tender is the Night, also shows up on a number of these lists, and it does so with good reason. While lacking in Gatsby's laser-like focus of message, Tender is the Night still tackles a number of truths beneficial to most who read it.

There's a lot going on in this novel. Unlike Gatsby's quick summer of collapse, Tender is the Night follows the agonizingly slow descent of its main character, Dick Diver, which plays out over the years amongst the chronicles of a disreputable group that flits in and out of his and his wife, Nicole's lives. In the beginning, Dick is the man everyone wishes they could be: charismatic, successful, liked by everyone. But as the story progresses, cracks form in the facade of the character. His ignoble beginnings are documented later in the novel, which serve as an excellent foundation for the fall that eventually occurs. Along the way, other themes interject themselves -- loss, innocence, the loss of innocence -- but the one that overwhelms is self-destruction. Dick Diver is the man who has everything, but who eventually destroys it all for some pretty base reasons. In between all these lines, Fitzgerald draws a remarkably clever blueprint for how one should not live their life.

If there's one criticism I have of Tender is the Night, it lies in its prose. Maddeningly flowery in too many places, it nonetheless contains innumerable passages that are either quite poignant, amazingly well-crafted, or just damn good. As I read it, I dog-eared for future reference countless pages that contained such lines or paragraphs; to have let such expositions glide in and out of my memory would have been a travesty. I'm certain that metaphors like Nicole's "crossing herself reverently" with perfume and speeches like Tommy Barban's on ethics will remain with me for years to come. In the end, though, I just wish Fitzgerald had performed some more paring of his manuscript to let these nuggets shine brighter.

When all is said and done, I still prefer the brevity and honed essence of The Great Gatsby. Tender is the Night just tries to say too much. But it was Fitzgerald's labor of love, and it shows. For that, it's worth a read and a hearty recommendation.

Tracing the arc of F. Scott Fitzgerald's marriage to his schizophrenic wife, Zelda, "Tender is the Night" is a tale painfully autobiographic. At times fragmented and confusing, the reader may forgive the rough spots for moments of lucidity and self-reflection that are achingly poetic. Thinly veiled in the guise of Dr. Dick and Nicole Diver, the fun, well-heeled "must know" couple who live for the moment, we are witness to the rapid devolution of their psyches and eventual car wreck of their lives. The first section is the most scattershot and uneven but the later portions of the book turn confessional about Dick's entrapment by his wife's instability and her family's insurmountable wealth, his self-destruction through alcohol as a means of escape, and their social ostracism as they become too intolerable to host. There is no irony that their descent into madness is partially due to their frantic life of leisure made possible by unspendable sums of money; it's enough to make any multimillionaire rethink leaving the bulk of their wealth to their offspring. Although not Fitzgerald's best, "Tender is the Night" gives us a rare window into the tumultuous life of American's literary icon, which sadly was tamed down from the even harsher reality they lived, and the complex love he had for his wife.

To put it as simple as possible, Tender is the Night is the story of a man and woman in a codependent relationship. She needs him for stability and he needs her to feel useful. A relationship like this is unhealthy, therefore, it can't last. But the two involved are the last to know.

The story starts off with the actress Rosemary, not the principle characters Dick and Nicole. This is done for a reason. Fitzgerald wants us as the reader to be introduced to the couple the way the world would. We're supposed to see Dick and Nicole as the glamorous, sophisticated couple who are rich and happy--hence, from the outside. Only as time goes by do we see them for the flawed individuals and disturbing couple they are. Dick loses himself in his attempt to be the rock to his emotionally and mentally disturbed wife. I'm still not sure how medically accurate it is for a woman to become a schizophrenic due to incest. But I digress.

Tender is the Night isn't as breezy as The Great Gatsby: it is more complex and longer; yet, it's not as good. Some of the characters here remind me of the empty, vacuous characters of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises: the so called "lost generation" who spend their time traveling and cavorting across Europe drinking and licking their emotional wounds while enjoying their expatriate status in the more "sophisticated" countries. Only, Tender is the Night is much meatier and more thoroughly enjoyable than Hemingway's drudgery.

Bottom Line: A thinly veiled autobiography of Fitzgerald that fails to be a masterpiece, but is still a worthy piece of work that I wouldn't be opposed to reading again.

Sometimes a writer doesn't just capture a place in time, but manages to capture that place for all times. F. Scott Fitzgerald is THE quintessential chronicler of the roaring twenties. Like 'The Great Gatsby', 'Tender is the Night' is about tragedy at the heart of the American dream. The novel delves into his rocky marriage, both of their affairs, the ongoing mental illness of his wife along with his own alcoholism. This semi-autobiographical novel is an intimate portrait of the peak of both of their lives together and what comes after it. His style of writing is so complex yet easy to follow and conveys feelings and emotions with a truly subtle perfection. Some author's voices continue to endure and this book is more proof positive as to why Fitzgerald's does....

Through his unparalleled social insight and clairvoyant, intuitive, and translucent dialogue, F. Scott Fitzgerald has masterfully established himself as undeniably one of the greatest writers of all-time - as well as my favorite writer. Having read Fitzgerald thoroughly, I can pithily opine that his amazing use of the English language approaches the sublime. Tender is the Night, written arduously between 1925-1934, is the work of a more polished, mature, as well as hardened, writer than that of the young 23 year-old rookie who wrote the idealistic, yet splendid, This Side of Paradise.
That being said, F. Scott does not disappoint by any means. This poignant and provocative tragic allegorical narrative of Dick and Nicole Diver strikingly, albeit unshockingly for Fitzgerald devotees, resembles F. Scott and Zelda's convoluted & tumultuous marriage. While F. Scott's alcoholism parallels Dick in an eerie kind of way, Zelda's mental instability and infidelity echo through the character of Nicole. When reading Tender is the Night, I felt as though I were on the beach in the French Riviera or on the Champs-Elysees in Paris with this group of pretentious and morally depraved bourgeoisie. Only Fitzgerald has that unique, intangible, & utterly indescribable ability to transport you into his vibrantly decadent world of the 1920's - a world that he brings to life unlike any other ever has - or ever will. How Hemingway could trash this great work that F. Scott poured his soul into is infantile and beyond me.
To quote F. Scott, "Gatsby was a tour de force, but this is a confession of faith."

What I will focus on here is the fact that scribners probably ruined Scotts career. In later editions esp 1962, they edited passages and I am curious as to the difficulties Scott had in getting continuing contracts with them and elsewhere . Of course this work has brilliant prose by Scott: it is revolutionary in that it deals with incest and homosexuality(one of the parts that were edited in later editions.) The discussion of the treatment of mentally ill patients in the era are important , for he describes Zelda as one of the patients, and also links that patients problem to syphillis!! For interesting counterpoint of life in Europe i read Miller "Tropic" . They go hand in hand . Did Scott star in "Tropic" Read and decide.

I found "Tender Is The Night" to be a very captivating story from the beginning to the end. It is an engaging story which grabbed not only my attention, but also my imagination by leading me to make early conclusions about how the story was going to turn out. I was reading the book always waiting for my predictions to come true, which kept me in some suspense. I found this facet of the book to be very exciting. However, unfortunately for me, I was wrong in some of my premature conclusions, and so, I was inevitably a little disappointed by the end. My suggestion is to read with some wonderment about what is to happen, but try not to set yourself up for any initial conclusions you might come to about the final destiny of the characters. Speaking of the characters, you definitely take on their emotions or develop your own about them, making the book that much easier to read and enjoy. I was liking some, feeling sorry for others, and still completely disliking others. The only negative thing I would say, looking back over the book, is that I do believe that there are some aspects of the characters' emotions and predicaments, which are alluded to, but then dropped. So, I was left with the feeling at times of expecting the deeper meaning of a character's wants, needs, and reasoning to unfold later. However, I found they never did. I, of course, could've been reading more into the words than what was intended. All in all, though, I recommend getting a copy and allowing yourself to be drawn into this emotional story. I think most people will find it enjoyable and easy to read.

A very powerful work of fiction , but still close to reality .Fitzgerald was a master story teller .
Between "Tender is the night" and "The Great Gatsby" ,it is difficult to decide which one I like more .Both are masterpieces.
I quote Sam Taylor-Wood:
"It is one of those books that you read and feel a shift... the story is told so poetically and eloquently. It is one of those books that you read and think: if I could only remember that sentence -- it is so beautiful."

If there is one book to be read in this year,it is this .Highly recommended.

I believe another reviewer stated that this novel is very well written in style, but the plot is rather ordinary. I tend to agree with that assessment. Having read the four finished novels of Mr. Fitzgerald in the order in which they were written, it appears that the author had matured as a writer in this book. The plot itself seemed like a reworked "The Great Gadsby". The protagonist is an American psychiatrist living in Europe.

The work certainly has some parallels to Mr. Fitzgerald's own life and in that context there is a semi autobiographical aspect to the work. In addition to reminding me of Gadsby, the novel also reminded me a little bit of "The Sun Also Rises". Mr. Fitzgerald was affiliated with Hemingway. I found it ironic that at the very end of the novel the protagonist is drinking anisette, a drink favored by Hemingway and often mentioned in Hemingway's work. It is mentioned only one time in this novel, despite many references to alcohol.

In summary, I am glad I read this work, and enjoyed it to some extent. However, it is not the kind of work I would reread without good reason. Thank You...

I liked Tender is the Night even more than I expected to. As a fan of a few of his other works (notably The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise and The Collected Short Stories), I went into this book with a healthy enthusiasm. . . What I discovered was a story that was painful to watch unfold and one that kept me engaged and interested in what was happening from the first page to the end.

It tells the tale of Dick Diver, his wife Nicole, and numerous other equally complicated individuals who sway in and out of their lives over the years following World War One and just prior to the rise of Adolph Hitler. Americans living in or around Paris and the resort spots of France, these are rich people, people so rich that their money has literally destroyed them. They have become those rare people who don't have to wish for anything physical, whether it comes in the dream of a mansion on a hill in some far away country, a group of friends that includes royalty and movie stars, or sexual conquests with anyone you can even momentarily desire. All their dreams have, or could possibly on a whim, come true. And so there is nothing in this life left for them . . .

It is a sad tale of likable people coming unglued, of seeing their lives destroyed and watching nobody care, regardless of their goodness. It is a story of absolute and utter desolation, finally, as the almost journalistic ending comes at you. It is like falling out of touch with someone who was once the most important person in your life, hearing vague stories about what they are up to and realizing they are getting fainter and fainter and fainter . . .

This was quite obviously a very personal book for its author, a disillusioned man who saw many of his own dreams come true early on and who was left to watch his own joy turn into boredom and finally complete indifference. This book is the nightmare that all of us hope never comes true. It is somewhat comforting, in the end, to realize that in spite of his own early death, his crazy wife and his alcoholism, F. Scott Fitzgerald's story isn't anywhere near as terrible as this one.

It is, among a multitude, one of the better books I have ever read.

Tender is the Night is a frustrating read. I found myself likening it to setting out intending to pick some highly coveted and delicious berries, only to find that the berries grew on a very dense bush that protected its fruit with pain inducing thorns. While it was at times an arduous task, it did have its rewards.

Having not read any F. Scott Fitzgerald previously, I would caution others to learn from my mistake and not start with this difficult read. Having not read any other of his works, I am not qualified to pass judgement regarding if this dense thicket of words is marred by an alcoholics diminshed skill or not. I fully suspect if anyone other than an already noted author of such high acclaim had written it, that it wouldn't be nearly as well regarded as it is.

Part one was so unwelcoming that I had to force myself to continue. Part two was immediatley better, but lapsed back into a painful read near it conclusion. Part three, which benefited from all the ealier heavy lifting was more palatable.

The main characters are not fully formed, it is difficult to find one to like or even admire. The secondary players are disposable. The establishment of time and place is weak and the narrative flow is halting at best. In truth, the story itself is not compelling either. With these flaws it undertandable, how a reader could be moved to provide only the meager one or two stars seen in some of the User Reviews.

However, there are many passages, phrases and moments buried in the otherwise painful prose that demonstrate a powerful writer's skill that alone are enough to make it worth the read. It is in descriptions such a "He came upon her in the garden , with her ams crossed high at her shoulders" and "He sat listening to the hum of the electric clock. To time"...Out of context these may not seem persuasive illustrations, but in the otherwise halting narrative they stand out like ripe berries amongst the thorns. The craftsmanship that created them, is what generated the many albeit generous four and five star reviews found here.

In the end, my three star rating is a reflection of the display of this talent, rather than a salute to a well executed example of it...I now plan to read the Great Gatsby with the hope and expectation, that it will provide an opportunity to see this formidable talent fully realized.

Dick Diver, whom Fitzgerald introduces through the implied point of view of Rosemary, a young Hollywood starlet, resembles the author's more renowned and equally enigmatic creation, Gatsby. Except Dick actually does something we can get a handle on: he's a doctor who knows a few things about psychology, one with a few blind spots about his own makeup. When we begin to see Dick's vulnerabilities, and the Gatsby-like underpining of his backstory, Tender Is the Night takes flight.

The same can be said Dick's wife, Nicole, a character drawn from on Fitzgerald's problematic real-life partner, Zelda. A formidable woman, as seen by Rosemary, the young ingenue, Nicole too is psychically fleshed out as the perfect couple begin to flounder. A head case of a different sort than Dick, she is in her own way as enigmatic.

The two of them lead the high life on the French Riviera, in Paris and in Switzerland. Money, and the society that takes it for granted, supplies the setting, the travel, the hotel rooms at the Ritz and skiing vacations in Gstaad. But psychology, of course, is another matter. Money won't buy happiness in that realm, which we discover is not quite Dick's sinecure, that in fact he sees himself a kept man as the effect he has on those around him wanes--though his acuity remains intact--and as Nicole begins to assert herself.

Tender Is the Night has much in common with its predecessor, This Side of Paradise, as well as Gatsby. In the latter, however, Fitzgerald put it all together, moving beyond the subjective inconsistencies of the privileged class and its assumptions about which he was both acutely aware but as a writer occasionally shorthand. Nevertheless, his struggle to define his protagonists is there in all the books, and makes this one a worthwhile read.Digging Deeper - A Memoir Of The Seventies

Not the most cohesive of Fitzgerald's work, Tender is the Night does deliver on Fitzgerald's beautiful prose and heartbreaking characterizations. The novel explores the disintegration of a promising young American doctor whose idealism comes under the crushing weight of hard capitalistic power. At times it becomes difficult to believe in the main character's steady decline since early in the novel he is depicted as so brilliant and thoughtful. However, Fitzgerald tries (and generally succeeds) in making the argument that American idealism is a fragile thing and not impervious to the destructive power of money.

Donald Gallinger is the author of The Master Planets

F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, Tender is the Night, is widely regarded as his second best offering (after The Great Gatsby) and, as with other second best efforts, it suffers by comparison. There are three things wrong with this book, two of which can be corrected and one which cannot. The first problem is that Fitzgerald uses far too many obscure (to an American reader) references and words in French. While such use lends a certain authenticity to the book, it also makes it difficult to read without a considerable amount of knowledge of France, French culture and the French language. One way to overcome this obstacle is to read the Wordsworth Classics edition which provides a list of 399 notes to explain the text. It is somewhat awkward in that you have to flip back and forth between the text and the notes which are in the back of the book. It would be a good idea to make a photocopy of these notes so that they can be referred to as you read the story.

The second problem, also correctable, but more awkward, has to do with the structure of the book. The main story idea is the disintegration of an idealistic and decent man, Dr. Richard Diver, who is corrupted by money and the loss of purpose in his life. To fully experience this tragedy the story should begin at the beginning, namely when Dr. Diver is working as a young psychiatrist in Switzerland. Instead Fitzgerald starts in the middle, that is to say after he is married to Nicole and they are on the French Riviera When we first meet him he comes across as a rich, indolent man given to hanging around with rich, unpleasant people. We also don't know, as Malcolm Crowley has pointed out, what the book will be about--some Americans in the South of France or its true purpose, the "the glory and decline of Richard Diver as a person." The Introduction to this edition by Henry Claridge of the University of Kent does a good job of explaining this problem. Professor Claridge indicates that in fact another edition was put together to correct this very situation, but for various reasons it is no longer in circulation. One could, of course, simply start reading the book at the chronological beginning (the start of Book 2) and then backtrack as necessary.

But the biggest problem, the one that cannot be corrected, is that we just don't care about these people, this insufferable group of Ugly Americans. The book begins by introducing us to Rosemary Hoyt, a 17-about-to-be-18 year old actress who has made one teeny bopper movie (Daddy's Girl) and regards herself, and is regarded by others, as the next coming of Greta Garbo.(For those of you too young to remember Garbo think Meryl Streep with a Swedish accent.). Rosemary has the de rigor mother who is micromanaging her career. She arrives in the South of France and meets a whole host of unpleasant people. There is Tommy Barban, a soldier of fortune apparently on leave between wars, Abe North, an alcoholic who gets more unpleasant as Book 1 continues, the fey Luis Campion, Earl Brady, the stereotypical Hollywood movie director, Mr. McKisco whom nobody likes, Mrs. McKisco who "sees something in the bathroom" and touches off a duel) and other assorted neer-do-wells. Even the Diver children, Lanier and Topsy, seem too too perfect, singing a tune in French. In this bunch Nicole comes off as clearly the best of the lot. And then there is Dick. But this isn't the idealist Dick, this isn't the tragic Dick. It's the idle rich Dick, whiling away his life on the beach, giving parties, doing the tourist thing in Paris.

One is hard pressed to admire Dr. Richard Diver at any point in the novel. He is certainly bright--Yale, Hopkins, Oxford--but the picture that Fitzgerald paints of him is more one of professional ambition than service to humanity. We are not talking Dr. Switzer here. He is also a bigot, witness his attitude toward Italians, which gets him into an argument with Italian taxi drivers and leads to negative consequences. And then there is his problem with women or should I say young girls? When we first meet Nicole she is barely 16 and still in shock from a traumatic incident that would affect any child. Yet we find him "falling in love" with her. At this point Diver is 27 years old. Later (chronologically) when the same thing happens with Rosemary Hoyt she is just turning 18. This is not Romeo and Juliet; it is not even the 47-year-old Bogart and the 19 year old Bacall in To Have and Have Not. It is Humbert Humbert and Lolita redeux. Perhaps the problem is that Fitzgerald is trying too hard. It took nine years to write the book and after creating one of the most memorable characters in American fiction, Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald was trying to top him. But the result is just not very successful. On the other hand Book Three is easily the best of the lot. Here Fitzgerald picks up the action and includes some scenes that are basically slapstick comedy, such as when Mary North (now Mary Minghetti) and her friend Lady Caroline Sibly-Biers are thrown in jail for impersonating two sailors and picking up some local girls. The scene ends fittingly when the local person who can arrange their release (Gausse), after taking much abuse from Lady Caroline, gives her a well-deserved boot in the rear.

The ending is also disappointing. Instead of a dramatic climax the book goes out, as t.s. eliot might have said, "not with a bang, but with a whimper." The whole Nicole and Tommy thing is simply not believable--and Dick as a GP in Palookaville??

When we read a novel it is like entering into another world. The characters become real and we want to care about what happens to them. When Quasimodo meets a tragic end at the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame we are saddened because we have come to care about him. But by the end of the first book of Tender is the Night I found myself not really caring about any of these people and plunged on with the novel only because it is Fitzgerald.

Then is there any reason to read the book? The answer I think is yes, for two reasons. First of all for the language. Fitzgerald is simply a marvelous writer of English prose. His language here is beautiful and evocative. Take for example, these lines from page 129: "She crossed and recrossed her knees frequently in the manner of tall restless virgins." "...she was a compendium of all the discontented women who had loved Byron a hundred years before..." All this about a relatively minor character, Baby Warren. And this line from page 193 about a policeman: "He had possessed the arrogance of a tall member of a short race, with no obligation save to be tall." Then there is this exchange between Nicole and Tommy Barban on page 246: (Tommy) "You know, you're a little complicated after all." Oh no," she assured him hastily, "No--I'm not really--I'm just a--whole lot of different simple people."

The second reason for reading Tender is the Night is that one should not confine one's self to just one book by an author. Just as we cannot fully appreciate Thackeray if we just read Vanity Fair or Dostoyevsky if we limit ourselves to Crime and Punishment we should read more of Fitzgerald's work than his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. To fully appreciate this book and Fitzgerald, one should read his first novel, This Side of Paradise and a good biography of his life as well as Gatsby. As with many authors much of his work is autobiographical and it is only by knowing his life that you can understand and fully appreciate his writing. In the end Fitzgerald is writing about himself and his own wife, Zelda. Knowing the lives these two led is vital to a full appreciation of this book.
the store forces reviewers to make a choice between a positive or a negative review. But this is a false dichotomy. This book is both very good and very bad. I recommend reading it as a part of Fitzgerald's body of work,, but not as his only work and not as your first reading of his novels.

Dick Diver fist fights with insolent Italian cab drivers, calls an arabian princess a "spic," screws around with a hot young actress, insults dull society women, humiliates himself, destroys his life with affectation and affection that is unparallelled in literature. He is a Modern version of Pechorin from Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time." Nicole Diver, his wife, is also well drawn by the master of the Jazz Age, but Dick's character study is the goldmine of this novel. I feel that the "madness" aspect of the novel is the dullest part, what Fitzgerald is truly interested in is catalogueing the slow unraveling of a talented, egotistical, alcoholic man, i.e. himself.

very few authors touch me in the way fitzerald does. most of his works usually include disclaimers pointing out his errors in location and spelling. if you can overlook these flaws you will realize that there is no other writer that so expresses an era. to read his novels takes you back into that magical yet innocent time. this book especially mirrors fitzerald's personal tragedies and triumphs; from the mental illness that took his wife away to the constant feelings of inadaquetly fulfilling his professional goals. the settings are spectacular and forever gone. one walks away feeling somewhat saddened by the characters and by the deterioration of dr. diver while his wife becomes strong once again. he has failed somewhat in his profession but has succeeded in his views by finally making his wife well. her life just starting once again full of promise; his life at its downturn. it is a good novel that follows his usual patterns but is a classic none-the-less.

On a regular basis, I see these reviews that seem pretentious. They don't really say much except that the person reviewing the book knows a lot about the author. You could take this as meaning that he or she is an authority and therefore to be trusted on the issue, but it also means that person is very biased. I'm an English major and I can spout off that information but I choose not to for the same reason that I became an English major (and teacher) in the first place: because I love to read and to write. The writing in Tender is the Night amazes even in scenes that may not push forward at a very fast rate. Fitzgerald doesn't have to fill the book with little literary tricks to keep you interested. The writing shines on with every page. You don't need to know every detail of his and Zelda's life to get Tender is the Night. You just have to love to read. This book ranks as one of my absolute favorites.

I cannot help think that I started reading one story and ended with another.

In book one we muddle through a pleasant world confused at all the characters that seem unnecessary. In book two we begin to become interested and by book three, we are hooked and left, at the end, slightly uncomfortable - feeling we have witnessed not fiction but Fitzgerald's own story of drinking and demise; his own wife's madness.

The prose itself is flawless and beautiful. This is the work of an amazing writer.

It all begins on 1924. We have many characters which caught great attention to my eye.Let me start out by saying how much I liked this novel. It really caught my attention because it seems that Fitzgerald transported gatsby to the south of France. Dick Diver is a talented psychiatrist that has invited everyone to his mansion. "I want to give a really bad party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there's a brawl and a seduction and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette."Sounds just like Gatsby.

We don't know Dicks' story yet and are left to make a judgement to what it was. The party all include many people, but of all there are three that are very significant. This whole idea that there'e to the novel is very confusing at times. Even though I may have liked the book alot, I think it's not directed to the audience I stand in. Fitzgerald compounded the book with many words that were unfamiliar to my understanding. Which required alot of searching in order to comprehend the novel. There's even some French in this novel. So if you're looking for a challenge and to enrich your vocab this would be a good book. Moving off that subject i need to state thate this novel is written in three different perspectives. Such that it's diveded in three books. It was a first to me, and i kind of liked that style. Moving back to subject, I would not recommend this book to others just because of the time it took to read it. I know it's a great book and all but many of my peers like to stick with t.v. Thereof its not one of my recomendation if you don,t like to read.Overall i give it a four out of five.

P.s This book left alot of unanswered questions. Some like Who is the victim Dick or Nicole? Will either Nicole or Dick find happiness? See if you can figure them out.

Why does Nicole and Dick's marriage disintigrate? The obvious answer is that Dick compromised his integrity marrying Nicole for her money and that Dick is an egomaniac, needing to be needed.

The deeper more true answer is that Nicole and Dick didn't have a partnership. She was sick and couldn't give very much back to Dick--to the relationship. And it gets tiring or boring always doing the same things for the same person to save them from themselves over and over again. Co-dependent relationships don't work.

Although a lot of the discussions about mental illness are extremely dated, some of the descriptions are painfully accurate. I identified with Nicole's sister who could only stop worrying about Nicole if: 1) Nicole married a Doctor to take care of her, and 2) if Niole lived near a sanitarium.

This is what it is like to have a loved one who is mentally ill:

"It was necessary to treat her [Nicole] with active, affirmative insistence, keeping the road to reality always open, making the road to escape harder going. But the brillance, the versatility of madness is akin to the resourcefulness of water seeping through and over and around a dike. It requires the united front of many people to work against it".

Too bad there are no organized ways of providing an organized front in our culture to help the mentally ill.

Perhaps Fitzgerald (FSF) would have swapped his well being for Zelda's--a prayer, "Lord, take my sanity but give Zelda back hers. Unlike Nicole, Zelda didn't get better.

I loved the description of the Rivera and Switzerland in the 1920s. I wish i could have been a part of it. The first part of the book is like watching the movie "To Catch a Thief" with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. You just love the ambience.

I liked this book better than _The Great Gatsby_ because I cared more about the characters and because it is autobiographical, and because I have had a loved one who is mentally ill.

This book is certainly less popular than Gatsby or This Side of Paradise because it requires the reader to be committed. It does not flow with the same tempo as some of Fitzgerald's other works but it is SO MUCH more "literary". Tender is the Night, therefore, is only enjoyable when you are reading passionately and allowing yourself to be immersed in all the various messages, patterns, and thematic influences that are constantly being projected by the author. It's like looking at one of those pattern pictures at the mall with the images buried in them-- it hurts your eyes at first, but once you see the image beneath it can be sublime. If there is a flaw to Tender however it is what could be considered as its inconsistency. There are moments reminiscent of the most brilliant elements of Faulkner's characterization, Hemingway's style-- even Gertrude Stein's insight. Unfortunately, these moments don't always coincide with each other. Nevertheless, this is Fitzgerald at his best and a strong recommendation.

Perfect? So very close.

Occasionally, the story lags a bit and parts are unbelievable (this is fiction, however) but I love the book regardless.

The author can say so much and so vividly that the rest of us just don't use with such fluidity and grace. Jaded, heartfelt too, I can't help but recall that as Fitzgerald wrote about a beautiful crazy wife his own beloved was facing a similar fate. It shows. A stunning book. I love it.

I, like probably everyone else, read 'Great Gatsby' as my first Fitzgerald novel. 'Gatsby' was his greatest work, no doubt. In 'Tender Is the Night', he expertly displays why he was such a good writer. He was a master. He is great at building up rich, beautiful worlds that are barely imaginable. He opens them up to us, and drops us right in the middle.
In 'Tender Is the Night', you get to follow the story of a man's less than ideal journey through life. It takes you trough different women, different locations, etc. You effortlessly get inside Dick's (the main character's) mind. If you've read 'Gatsby', make this book your next Fitzgerald read.

Dick Diver a promising young pyschiatrist falls in love withan emotionally disturbed young woman with a troubling past and a great deal of money.
Dick forgoes self to shelter Nicole from the harsh world and shelter friends and family from Nicole's demons. As his character is introduced he is the facilitator and the party organizer of all the english speaking ex-patriots who vacation on the Riveira. As Nicole recovers, Dick loses himslf as he slides into alcoholhism and boorish behaviour.
This novel closely resembled Fitzgerald's own tragic life and, like Gatsby,is a classic.

I read Tender is the Night soon after completing a somewhat haphazard survey of a selection of Fitzgerald's earlier stories and novels. The first thing that struck me about that book was the sophistication and maturity of the storytelling. The gossamer thin plot neither unfolds nor plods. Rather, it drifts through the life of Dick and Nicole Diver spanning five years. If I do have a criticism of the book it's that there is so little plot. It has elements of a romance, of a mystery, and of a tragedy, but defies most of the essential characteristics of each. The reader is instead left with a rich yet curiously oblique portrait of a couple falling out of love. Ironically, that's also the book's saving grace. Where traditional plot lines tend to dramatize with thick, clear lines, Fitzgerald's light and poetic prose paints with a more refined brush. You get to see Dick's decline with the same sad pity as his wife, and in the end are left with a better understanding of his downfall. More of a psychological study than a true drama, it's not a book that will leave you caring about the characters or wrapped up in the action.

It is often said that every writer has, at least, one good book in him. Sadly most of them only have one. This certainly appears to be the case for Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby, while flawed, is nonetheless a great novel. Gatsby is a tragic figure motivated by a self destructive pursuit of his vision of the American dream. Dr. Dick Diver, the central character of Tender is the Night, on the other hand, is naught but a dissipated wastrel. As his wife, who he met while he was working as a psychiatrist & she was interred in an asylum, gains mental stability & some kind of shaky personal wholeness, he descends into drink & carnality & ends the novel roaming from town to town practicing medicine briefly before moving on. Diver is the kind of insipid navel gazing character who has plagued the Century's fiction.
Tom Wolfe, touring in support of his new novel, has launched himself on a jeremiad against the Modern novel & novelist. His central point is that novelists need to stop looking inward and look without. He's saying, Go out into America & tell the wonderful stories that you find there. There are wonderful stories, waiting to be told, but our greatest novelists are cloistered in Universities, Manhattan apartments, etc., picking at the scabs on their own psyches & the vomiting forth their internal monologues. Tender is the Night seems to be a victim of this Modernist disease, too autobiographical & self absorbed to tell us much of value about the wider world.
GRADE: C-

Many people consider The great Gatsby to be Fitzgerald's greatest work. In doing this they are shortchanging him from all his other novels, and his short stories (which are also gems of craftsmanship). Tender is the Night is a mature work of Fitzgerald and therefore may not be as readily acceptable to the masses as The Great Gatsby. In addition, the vocabulary in Tender is the Night is decidedly complicated and slowgoing. However if you are patient, and have a good dictionary, you will be awarded by a beautiful plot in a matchless setting, that takes you to a time that has long past. Enjoy!!!!

Tender Is the Night is uncomfortably autobiographical, written after Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, was institutionalized. Though it begins with the story of Rosemary, an actress on vacation, hopelessly attracted to Dick Diver, a married man and successful psychiatrist, the story changes, without transtition, to focus on Dick and his wife's unsettling past. Rosemary fades almost completely out of the story while Fitzgerald, vicariously through Dick Diver, explores his coming to (or failure to come to) grips with ageing, his marriage, postwar stress, and the fear that ultimately his promising career would fail. Fitzgerald literally fulfilled his prophecy and never published another novel.
As with most Modern American literature, Tender Is the Night is a depressing story. We witness the dissolution of marriage, man, and find the Lost Generation ultimately just that--lost.
It's been several years since I read The Great Gatsby, but if memory still serves, Tender Is the Night is more captivating and, in my opinion, the better of the two.

Tender Is the Night is the story of a very dysfunctional American couple, the Divers, slowly disintegrating in Europe. Much less economical and symbolic than The Great Gatsby, it is a personal work. There are some problems with this novel, such as the coincidental way in which characters meet each other again across Europe and the poor development of some of the important secondary characters. However, one is convincingly drawn in to the initial magic of the Divers' relationship and its gradual collapse.

While Fitzgerald proved his genius with The Great Gatsby, I might not so readily attribute that much to this somewhat autobiographical story about people mostly abroad in Europe. I found it hard to like the characters in the story, and things don’t all resolve substantially at once like in The Great Gatsby. The narrative style is what kept me reading this book to the end. Also, there are enough other characters who pop up in the story to keep things lukewarm interesting.

A product I would recommend is Sirens of Morning Light by Benjamin Anderson, a quest for a man in Iowa to regain his identity, which becomes entangled with people who claim to have known him when he discovers he is a scientific experiment. I believe the characters make sense in following through for what seems to be their rights.

As I finish up my tour of Fitzgerald, I find Tender Is the Night a good representative of him as a whole, both what I like and what I don't. Here, we find the strength of his maturity, which is lacking in earlier works, but it still strays into more self-indulgence and more-of-the-same hopelessness (along with its partners alcoholism and immorality) than the much better Great Gatsby or even the unfinished Last Tycoon.

I felt the first half was by far the stronger. The second lacks strong plot movements and, even more importantly, strong examples of the schizophrenia that's supposedly at the root of the characters' motivations. All in all, an interesting outing, but not the author's best work.

Many people consider The great Gatsby to be Fitzgerald's greatest work. In doing this they are shortchanging him from all his other novels, and his short stories (which are also gems of craftsmanship). Tender is the Night is a mature work of Fitzgerald and therefore may not be as readily acceptable to the masses as The Great Gatsby. In addition, the vocabulary in Tender is the Night is decidedly complicated and slowgoing. However if you are patient, and have a good dictionary, you will be awarded by a beautiful plot in a matchless setting, that takes you to a time that has long past. Enjoy!!!!

Tender Is the Night is uncomfortably autobiographical, written after Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, was institutionalized. Though it begins with the story of Rosemary, an actress on vacation, hopelessly attracted to Dick Diver, a married man and successful psychiatrist, the story changes, without transtition, to focus on Dick and his wife's unsettling past. Rosemary fades almost completely out of the story while Fitzgerald, vicariously through Dick Diver, explores his coming to (or failure to come to) grips with ageing, his marriage, postwar stress, and the fear that ultimately his promising career would fail. Fitzgerald literally fulfilled his prophecy and never published another novel.
As with most Modern American literature, Tender Is the Night is a depressing story. We witness the dissolution of marriage, man, and find the Lost Generation ultimately just that--lost.
It's been several years since I read The Great Gatsby, but if memory still serves, Tender Is the Night is more captivating and, in my opinion, the better of the two.

Tender Is the Night is the story of a very dysfunctional American couple, the Divers, slowly disintegrating in Europe. Much less economical and symbolic than The Great Gatsby, it is a personal work. There are some problems with this novel, such as the coincidental way in which characters meet each other again across Europe and the poor development of some of the important secondary characters. However, one is convincingly drawn in to the initial magic of the Divers' relationship and its gradual collapse.

While Fitzgerald proved his genius with The Great Gatsby, I might not so readily attribute that much to this somewhat autobiographical story about people mostly abroad in Europe. I found it hard to like the characters in the story, and things don’t all resolve substantially at once like in The Great Gatsby. The narrative style is what kept me reading this book to the end. Also, there are enough other characters who pop up in the story to keep things lukewarm interesting.

A product I would recommend is Sirens of Morning Light by Benjamin Anderson, a quest for a man in Iowa to regain his identity, which becomes entangled with people who claim to have known him when he discovers he is a scientific experiment. I believe the characters make sense in following through for what seems to be their rights.

As I finish up my tour of Fitzgerald, I find Tender Is the Night a good representative of him as a whole, both what I like and what I don't. Here, we find the strength of his maturity, which is lacking in earlier works, but it still strays into more self-indulgence and more-of-the-same hopelessness (along with its partners alcoholism and immorality) than the much better Great Gatsby or even the unfinished Last Tycoon.

I felt the first half was by far the stronger. The second lacks strong plot movements and, even more importantly, strong examples of the schizophrenia that's supposedly at the root of the characters' motivations. All in all, an interesting outing, but not the author's best work.

I was expecting to like this book more, and only checked it out because the library didn't have 'The Great Gatsby.' I liked this book more than Gatsby, but after having read both of them, I feel it's about as undeveloped and unconvincing as Fitzgerald's more famous work.
I really liked Part One, but things really went south in Part Two. I really didn't see how Rosemary fit into the plot at all; she's this big-name rising starlet who is instantly warmly and closely befriended by all of Dick and Nicole's adult friends when they're in France, and she and Dick are mutually attracted to one another, an attraction strongly encouraged by Rosemary's mother. Unless there's something going on between the lines that I failed to see, this didn't seem like anything more than a young girl with a crush on an older married man, a crush that doesn't go much farther than some secret rendezvous where they don't do anything more than kiss, hold one another, and say sweet nothings. Then she drops out of their lives and doesn't appear again till close to the end, where she and Dick are talking like they shared some affair. How could the brief appearance of a young girl disrupt Dick and Nicole's marriage so much, esp. since they never even slept together? This is just like a lot of books with alleged affairs or love stories which are never given any motivation or credibility, explaining why these two people are attracted to one another and would want to leave an existing relationship for this new dangerous one. It really insults the reader's intelligence.
Besides the alleged love story, the character development of Dick and Nicole were also really wanting. We know that Nicole has been psychologically unstable anyway since she was a young girl (indeed, she and Dick met while he was treating her in a mental hospital), but there's no insight into why she goes back to her old unglued ways. Her behaviour doesn't even seem that out of control, just erratic and a bit strange. We also get no insight into why Dick also starts on a course towards his own mental breakdown. I had no understanding of why they began acting that way; why should I consider him the hero and root for him when I'm given no insight into his condition, no explanation or rationale for his behaviour, and when he doesn't want to deal with his wife's serious problems, who indeed even worsens them? There were also a few pointless and dead-end subplots, like Abe North's problems in Paris and the incident towards the end involving Mary North and Lady Sibley-Beers. The edition I read also had a lot of untranslated French passages, as though everyone still speaks French as a second language or even speaks it more often than their native tongue. Those days are gone, and there's no need to belabour the point by having whole conversations in French when the reader knows that they're in France and speaking to French people. The end of the book was also a big dead-end. The story was interesting, just not convincing, realistic, or believable.

When Rosemary Hoyt first glances at Dick Diver standing on the beach in the Riviera, he desperately intrigues her. She is in love at first sight, and she wants to know everything about him. There is a lot to know about Dick and his wife Nicole. As the story unfolds, naturally, more and more about the Divers is exposed.
The effects of mental disorders are complex and devastating. Tender is the Night talks gracefully about mental disorders, not putting them down, but showing that even the most beautiful "normal" people can be affected. Dick and Nicole Diver have a seemingly perfect marriage until Dick's life begins to come apart at the ends. Nicole's schizophrenia becomes too much for Dick, who is also her psychiatrist, and their marriage.
This book was really a writing from Fitzgerald's heart. It directly reflects his wife, himself, and the failing of their marriage. His wife was also a schizophrenic, and her institutionalization marked the end of their marriage. Her mental disorder had torn them apart.
My favorite quality about Fitzgerald's writing has consistently been his ability to transport the reader directly to the 1920's. One feels like he/she is in the scene, watching the characters play out the book.

Fitzgerald has an amazing style of writing. Afer a few short stories and Gatsby, I thought I'd love Tender is the Night. In the beginning of the book (book1), I was totally absorbed with Fitzgerald's descriptions and idealism and perfection of Dick Diver. When Rosemary left as 'narrator,' I thought the book went somewhat downhill, along with Dick. But then, that's how the story goes. I fell for the disillusionment at the start, and was disappointed as the 'real' was revealed.

If you are considering reading a number of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels I would highly recommend the chronological approach, so that you can see his style develop from his graduation from Princeton to his untimely death.

Scott published little that is not deserving of 5 stars...such titles as This Side of Paradise, A Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Winter Dreams, The Great Gatsby, etc, etc, etc, and of course Tender is the Night...what a fine piece of work! Whether you prefer one of Fitz's novels, novellas, or short stories to others, I think, is a matter of time and place... For each person who truly makes the effortless effort to enjoy the man's writing, you will find a love of letters and a brooding look at lives of the young from a time not unlike this one.

Tender is great stuff! Read it! I personally have never been exstatic about Gatsby, it is unfortunately over analyzed in high school classes thus cheapening it...those less often raped by stupid teachers such as TITN are more interesting to read and think about.

My high school English teacher had a big thing for Lost Generation writers, and while I've taken on her love for Hemingway, I may need to read another Fitzgerald to get back into the Lost Generation as a whole. Tender is the Night was not what I expected. It took too long to get into, dragging the reader with one character and then dropping her half way through the novel to pursue the flashbacks about the main couple. I was totally bored with it. I give it three stars because I can respect the beauty of FS Fizgerald's prose, but the story just didn't grab me.

This book was the book written right after the famous of Fitzgerald's writings, The Great Gatsby. Tender Is the Night took him six years to write and it was very close to his heart since some scholars believe that this book represented his down fall after his wife Zelda died. Also, many have stated that this is second best book, but I will say otherwise and call it his best book which he wrote.
This book will seem very boring at the beginning because the main character, Dick Drive will not appear until the end of the second chapter, and will also talk about certain "plots" or other games which are not relevant to the story. Nevertheless, the plot will start to build when Rosemary starts to fall in love with Dick and the point where the story starts to cook with gas is at the Driver's party.
Throughout the book, there are points that will leave you in suspense, and will also get you to motivate you to read more into the story to see what happens. One example is why did Dick marry Nicole. Though the story, their marriage has a facade over it, when they are around a crowd, they act with love and is flawless, yet when they are by themselves, it is a whole different world. They act very unfriendly, the couple do not really talk to each other or get into arguments. The Driver's marriage is not strong, and the weakness will lead up to chaos and the conclusion of the book.
Also, in the book many subplots will make the book even more suspenseful to read. The subplots I believe are what keep you going in this book because it will show that true life is not just one problem (like having an affair) there are many. Some include, what happened in the restroom, why is Mr. North hiding, and the overall one, how did Dick and Nicole get married. When they are first introduced into the book, they do not give the answer right away, you must read and continue reading the solution to the subplot, and then will lead you to the main one.
Finally, I really found this book to be a great one. The main characters are great, the story plot is good, but the only bad item is how it would throw me off the track when another problem arrived. The effort of the six years that Fitzgerald actually paid off, although he was not as successful with this book.

OK I will try to retain my temper while rectifying some of the inexcusable comments made by various reviewers. Someone has said that this book has no structure to it and that it is confusing and difficult to read. That is strange, since one of my first thoughts after reading the first few chapters was 'By God this is nicely structured, isn't it? This Fitzgerald fellow must be a genius to pull it off like he does.' Furthermore, the story is told chronologically and causes no confusion in that aspect. I would also like to note that my mothertongue is Dutch and that English is only my third language, still I had no problems with the writing of Fitzgerald and found it easy enough to read.
I also get sick and tired of people who'll tell you the book is bad because the book and/or the characters are morally incorrect. Look, life isn't morally correct and neither are people, so why would you want your art to be? Perhaps you like to be lied to? I always wonder where these people get the authority (and the nerves) to question other people's morality.
Then another reviewer wrote that there is no central point to the story. I mean what book did you read? There is only one point to the story and that's the marriage between Dick and Nicole, how it came to be and how it eventually faded out like the day into the night, ever so tender.
And I think this is what most people have trouble with: Fitzgerald's subtle, almost minimalistic writing. In the whole book (my copy was 392 pages) there is not one redundant word, it's like a poem. If you want a good book that's beautifully written and masterfully structured, you can't go wrong with this one. If you want action, plot, speed, heroics, morals, endings and whatever it is you crazy kids crave for nowadays: go to the movies!

When I critique a literary work, I often consider the same elements that any other critic may: plot, theme, diction, style, etc. However, it is a rare occurrence when someone reads a story to which he/she can absolutely relate. After all, literature is best at providing a person with a way in which to be entertained, yet learn something about him/herself. In my case, I read Tender Is The Night during a period when I was breaking up with my girlfriend. If it were not for this situation, I would not have appreciated this work, but due to my circumstances, I became especially interested. I found that I could relate to many of Dick Diver's emotions, while at the same time I realized the genius with which Fitzgerald writes this novel. I knew that a person could learn a lot about him/herself through reading since literature can act as a mirror which people can see themselves, but I never knew that reading could create such an intimate experience that would hit me so close to home. Nevertheless, this book is one of the greatest literary works that I have ever read, and I would suggest that this would be a great novel for anyone who enjoys tragic human behavior.

Dick Driver is a psychiatrist with a crazy, though rich wife. They travel together around France and don't seem to know what to do with themselves.

Driver meets a young actress who is taken with him, but it not until five years later, that the two become involved. Neither is in love, and Driver seems to have forgotten about his wife and children, so, once again, another sad story.

While I am glad I read this book, it left me with a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction. What I liked most was the author's ability to convey, usually brilliantly, a sense of the locations where the action took place, of the ex-pat social scene in the 20's, and of certain specific incidents in the plot. However, I had problems accepting much of the dialogue, which struck me throughout the book as being not only thoroughly dated but, I suspect, as having probably rung false even at the time of publication. Nor did I fully buy the portrayal and development of the main characters (except perhaps of Rosemary Hoyt). Nicole's mental illness was impenetrable all the way up to its sudden cure, and Dick Diver's "degeneration" occurs without any understandable impetus. Maybe that is how it is in real life, but it was not inspiring reading. At the end, what did I get from this book? - a vaguely depressing and, finally, rather forgettable story but some lingering pleasure from the beautiful descriptive passages portraying the Riviera and Switzerland during that era. I would suggest that anybody who reads this book also try "The Sun Also Rises" and see which they prefer....

I first read this masterpiece in college. It impacted me greatly. To that end," Tender is the Night" gets my vote as the all time greatest American novel. Every private library must have this work of absolute genius. The author is gifted and is able to write great prose at an early age, with the publication of his first novel, "This Side of Paradise."
However, upon his return to the United States after spending many years in Paris with "The Lost Generation" F. Scott Fitzgerald finally completes "Tender is the Night." He tells the story of Dick Diver whose life and work tumbles because of his marriage to the wealthy beauty Nicole Warren. This book is heartbraking. Fitzgerald's command of dialogue and masterful understanding of human emotions shakes the soul of the reader.

Great book, fluid, insightful, detailed, gripping and haunting. I read the Great Gatsby year's ago, which I liked, but this also is a classic that may be better than Gatsby. Excellent description of life in post WW1 Europe amongst the exceedingly rich, but not too detached from the reality of the environment and times to be like an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. There is history, psychiatry, art , leisure and seriousness woven throughout. I'm struck anew by Fitzgerald's smooth prose and uncanny ablity to sum and summarize people and places so creatively.

I've read Tender is the Night a few times and every time I do I'm struck by how sad it is. Virtually the ENTIRE book is sad.

Is the plot perfect? No, the plot is kind of a mess, actually. But in the end it comes together. And the prose is some of the best you'll read in modern English.

I read "Gatsby" and was awed by Fitzgerald's ability to both describe the 1920's and to draw his readers into that postwar period. His characters felt real to me. So, I couldn't wait to read Tender is the Night. "Tender" seems to reveal more about Fitzgerald personal pain than anything else. His novel elaborately blames Nicole for Dick's emotional decay. To me, this story line just doesn't bear close scrutiny. Dick's behavior is controlling,habitually deceitful and at times misogynistic. Time after time Dick control's Nicole's actions and refuses to allow her to even discuss her viewpoint. Nicole's behavior is unbalanced but is it schizophrenic?
It's very revealing that a 28 year old man would fall in love with a 16 year old girl. Later, when Nicole has grown up a bit, Dick falls in and out of love with Rosemary, a very child-like 18 year old.
Granted, women's rights were along way off in 1925 the year Fitzgerald began writing Tender is the Night, but Dick seems more in charge of Nicole's life than seems warranted by either the prevailing culture or by Nicole's illness.
I'd say that Fitzgerald unconsciously revealed his own role in his decaying marriage and like most folks tried to point the finger elsewhere.

I am puzzled by readers who found the plot lacking but loved the prose. I was entranced by the story which enabled me to slog through the turgid, and pretentious writing. While I prefer the Great Gatsby where the writing is crystal clear compared to Tender's murkiness the plot of Tender Is The Night for me is unforgettable. I remember it from my first reading when my childhood memories of a family vacation in the mid 1930's in Switzerland and on the French Riviera were sharper than they are today. I am infuriated by the Divers' snobbery and condescension toward people who were not members of their self appointed inner circle, not to mention their racism. Yet I am moved by Dick and Nicole's love story. Rosemary's presence and her mother's role in her life and love affair are puzzling and I can only justify their inclusion as a tool to demonstrate how much the Divers were admired, but why? They were shallow people with shallow interests and equally shallow friends. Dick's acclaimed politness might be praiseworthy but what else did he have to recommend him? In the end even that quality disappeared in the most dramatic way.They weren't even good parents. The children's care was left to hired help, but I guess that was de rigueur among the upper classes of the time. The first part of the book was the weakest with especially florid almost impenetrable prose. Where was Hemingway when Fitzgerald needed him? Part 2 was a big improvement. The scenes at the clinic near Lausanne were well constructed and the dialogue rang true. The good Swiss doctor and his wife were believable. The dying patient with the tormenting skin condition was exactly as I remembered her from my first reading of the book so long ago. Dick's gradual disintegration is troubling while Nicole's ascent toward self-reliance and freedom is uplifting. It's ironic that the story's denouement foretells Scott's own tragic ending while Nicole's happy life with a new husband in no way resembles Zelda's later years. Zelda perished in a fire which destroyed the mental hospital in which she had been confined. So much about Dick and Nicole angered me. But they were creatures of their age and social milieu and they were well captured in this book. Fitzgerald portrayed the glamour, the cynicism, and the smugness of a certain type of wealthy American better than almost any other writer of that era. The weariness of living life in an alcoholic haze has been depicted more graphically by other authors but not in posh locales Fitzgerald made so real. You can almost hear a Cole Porter melody as you read about these ghosts of the roaring 20's and the wraiths of the troubled 30's. A good period piece if you want to learn about that era which is rather dear to this old lady's heart.

Tender is the Night is certainly a professional effort, however it is dull, it is a bit dense, and the timelines occasionally are confusing, making the first two obeservations even more glaring. It is a sad story, but one in which I found a chore to read for the most part. It seems to cerebral to conjur up the passion of a taboo love affair and the malaise of a dying one. We can't compare all of a writer's work to his greatest triumph (gatsby in this case) but since I read Tender is the Night because I liked Gatsby so much, the comparison is inevitable.
Maybe I'm too young to truly understand this story or better yet feel it, but I have a feeling when I'm older I won't want to attempt another pass.

Tender is the Night is a very well written and engaging novel. However, it is a far cry from some of Fitzgerald's other works. By no means did it impart the dramatic and profound portrayals of The Great Gatsby, yet it did create a certain amount of sympathy for its leading characters and the lifestyle as a whole. Again, Fitzgerald does what he does best in portraying the lifestyles of the upper-class during the 1920's.
I would recommend this book for those interested in the culture of the 1920's and for mere entertainment's sake, but it is not as profound a novel as it could have been.

I enjoyed this novel very much, but it's not as good as "The Great Gatsby" or "The Beautiful and Damned" I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline of Dick Diver and his wife Nicole. It's beautifully written, but I hated the way the book ended~I guess I was hoping for a more positive ending, rather than Nicole and Tommy Barban becoming romantically involved instead remaining with Dick. However, I'd certainly recommend this book to anyone

"We are rich and beautiful, and I am in love with you!" "But I am married, and it is forbidden!" "But we are rich! And I love you!" "I love you too, even though I am married! Because you are beautiful, and rich! Even though my wife is also beautiful and rich!"
Depression era publishing, and F.Scott was SURPRISED that this book wasn't well received? The characters are so distantly removed from reality (the successful doctor, the daughter of ridiculous wealth, the movie star) that it's impossible to connect with anyone in this book, even coming from an upper middle-class lifestyle. If I were scrapping for food in the depression, I can't IMAGINE reading this book--it would've infuriated me.
I dragged byself through it largely because of Gatsby: we've all read Gatsby, and we all liked Gatsby. This book might follow the course of Fitzgerald's own life, but it's hard to read and impossible to associate with, and it was painful to get through. None of Gatsby's rich imagery or deeper undercurrents. A 'Confession of Faith' for F.Scott, perhaps, but overall a shoddy 'other book' by an author of high standing.
No surprise to me, whatsoever, that Tender is the Night flopped and broke Fitzgerald's heart. I can't say I'd recommend reading it, unless you want to be one of the few who's read 'the other book' by the Gatsby guy.

He writes beautifully, but I had particular difficulty to follow and be enganged. I have read The Beautiful and the Damn and dont recall having to force myself to understand what was happening. But the flaw may be all on me.

Where do I begin? Okay, so I finished this book last night and I've been really thinking about it for quite some time; yet, I still have no idea how I really feel about it. The book starts of extremely promising, Book I is utterly brilliant. I was experiencing dejavu, it was comparable to my first reading of The Great Gatsby. His prose are riveting, the man could write about peeling an onion and make it enjoyable to read. His greatest attribute, his prose, could also be, at times, his worst. It seems at times within the novel, much more so than Gatsby, that there are passages, sometimes large chunks, of the novel that can be skimmed over. Tender doesn't really engage you, it doesn't leave a lasting impression besides the confirmation of Fitzgerald's awe-inspiring prose. The plot almost seems irrelevant at times. By creating such imperfections of characters, did Fitzgerald intentionally create an imperfect novel? I find it extremely odd that he said this novel would be his greatest creation, greater than Gatsby. It really leads to me consider that maybe it was intentional. By me even considering the possibility, am I giving him too much credit? Doesn't the mere fact that I've spent hours agonizing over the novel say something about the novel? Maybe I'm not giving him enough credit for writing a thoroughly enjoyable novel. Maybe it's because I compare everything he writes to my unrealistic expectations for him-because of Gatsby. I get the feeling that had I read Tender before Gatsby, I'd probably give it a much more positive review. It's like reading Chabon after Kav & Clay, or Woolf after Mrs.Dalloway, et al., nothing you'll ever read would be sufficient. That being said, my opinion of Fitzgerald as the greatest American author to ever live remains unchanged.

I think you need a quiet place and state of mind to really appreciate this book, because it is not only the stories of these characters but the way they are presented...so incredibly tragic, poetic and beautiful. The author did an incredible job in inviting readers into the labyrinth of hope, despair, conflicts, alienation of the characters so intimately. Great book.

I have read this book maybe a half dozen times and everytime the book gets better. This book was produced inbetween nine years of distraction and disapointment, and while Gatsby is lean and tight and fluid--this book is anything but. It has its problems, but Fitzgerald writes his way out of them. The Difference between the twenty-eight year old writer of 'Gatsby' and the thirty-seven year old author of 'Tender' is just that--Fitzgerald had grown up. He wrote a book he hoped to be the model for the age--Joyce, Stein, Conrad, Proust. But instead he produced a book that is all Fitzgerald and consequently a model for any age. His style has exceeded 'Gatsby' and so has his content; his characters are real--breathng, smiling, crying, lusting, drinking, smoking, loving, and thinking. A book about "the dying fall"--something we all understand. Filled with soul--it is Fitzgerald's absolute finest.

Tender Is The Night was a book I found hard to get into in the beginning. I found it boring for me because it was not something that I would prefer to read. The characters in the book where simple minded. The only character I was able to somewhat get a connection with was Dick. He is the psychiatrist of the store. He is the basic, do everything that is expected of you then be on your way, kind of guy. He is also a great guy that makes everybody laugh, and everybody loves him. However, as the book goes on, he goes through this metamorphis phase of his personality; for me that seems more exciting to read than his (goody two shoes) act. His actions made the book a little more interesting. In addition to Dick's performance, two women, Rosemary and Nicole, gave me the reality splash of fighting over a boy that last from generation to generation. Nicole, being the wife of dick, is like the ditzy girl in high school who doesn't know that her boyfriend is a lying geezer. Rosemary, on the other hand, is the girl who you think is your friend ,but ends up stabbing you in the back and steals your boyfriend, yet manages to keep a façade of a smile on her face. I found it amusing to read this about grown women and men in here, acting like teenagers in high school. Now, I am unaware of the literary significance of Tender In The night. I am sure to someone else it would be worthy of a high reward for romantic novels. Its quality of romance and its likely points, it is a highly renowned book that would be good for anyone looking for that. In addition to, when I think about the theme, I think is that love is only as strong as its beholders. Dick keeps telling Rosemary that he loves her and that he loves Nicole as well. While Rosemary keeps telling Dick that she loves him , and Nicole keeps telling Dick that she loves him too. They are all nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. They're swimming around in circles like fish stuck in a tank. They keep saying the three most powerful words , with passion and glorification. Onlt to let it slip through their grasp like a sudsy bar of soap. Hopefully this book will be more of a page turner for you then with me. Let it take you on its voyage of thunderstorms and calm seas. Like I said, it was boring for me.

Tender is the Night is no Gatsby (though what is), but it is still an important novel. It is more personal than the other of Fitzgerald's work and covers happy days in France through the madness and alcoholism that follows. As great as this novel was, there were some weaknesses. It did seem to get weaker as it went along. Part One is the best, Part Two is weaker and weakens as it goes along. And Part Three is the weakest of all--even Fitzgerald himself admitted that. Still, it is well written and you can see why Fitzgerald is an American classic.

It's often hard to separate the work from the author, and never more so with "Tender is the Night."
This world is not beautiful, nor are the people particularly noble, but there portrayed with such brutal honesty I couldn't stop reading until the very end.
I did not enjoy this nearly as much as "Great Gatsby," but it is a great representation of the man, his life, and the times.

Fitzgerald's lyrical gifts shine here, faintly tinted by a mellowing sense of tragedy. While 'Gatsby' will remain the seminal Fitzgerald, readers may find this novel a refreshing change from the revisionist, dogmatic, politically correct, feminist times in which we now are forced to live. The heart, of course, transcends all of these, and this is where Fitzgerald stands apart, and will continue to do so. He had a favorite phrase which he used to describe his approach to writing: "a romantic eagerness" and his prose style really does reflect "some sort of epic grandeur," as Bruccoli titled his book on F. Scott. Those who attempt to remake this novel in light of present times are missing its unique charm: the charm of an indolent, golden time which predates the soundbyte and the end of rational historical research.

my first crack at fitzgerald; i'm very impressed. but it requires patience- while overly wordy in places, often incredible actions and insights are buried in single sentences. fitzgerald seems to treat his characters with contempt at times, but we can't stop feeling connected to them. also a wonderful look at the art-deco world of europe between wars.

No matter what the pundits say give this book a chance, and you'll find it to be Fitzgerald's best. The Great Gatsby may be more elegantly written but Tender Is The Night packs a wallop that makes the former seem a bit too cute and melodramatic. With the revelation of Nicole Warrens's source of mental illness (which you'll find in the unabridged version), the plot moves along at a snappy pace with premonitions of a future tragedy hinted at but never revealed (which is the sign of master storyteller). The ending is incredibly sad and because of it incredibly beautiful. Unlike Nick Carraway's eulogy that acts like a balm, the 3rd person narrative of Tender Is The Night offers the reader no such solace. There's only the lingering image of a man born to be great, broken beyond repair.

Fitzgerald is the greatest American writer ever to pick up a pen. It is a character study unparalled in any of his works. The imagery is stunning and beautiful and then all at once shocking and sad. You can't call Dick Diver a pathetic man, but rather a man who sensed he outlived his purpose and then realized he was an old man, very much alone and unhappy. I was happy that Nicole was able to recover as she did, and at the same time deep down inside hoping against his own self-destruction that Dick would be able to pick up his own shattered pieces of wasted life, before he killed himself or was killed. But you knew it couldn't end that way, and anyhow when fitzgerald puts together a scene, you merely brace yourself and go along for the ride. He always makes you glad you did. I think this book is a masterpiece, fully realized but tragic.

F. Scott Fitzgerald has well developed the novel Tender is the Night. There is a lot of conflict throughout the whole entire novel. He begins by introducing two different groups of people into the novel. Then he movers into the main conflict which is the love affair between Rosemary Hoyt, a movie star, and Dick Diver, a psychologist. This affair then causes many problems at different times throughout the novel.
The characterization shows how people can be categorized in different groups. The characters in Tender is the Night are very well rounded and kept. There is a lot of controversy among the two groups of people. The first group consists of high-class, wealthy, and good-looking people. While the other group consists of more middle-class people and they are not so attractive either. Conflict first begins with these two groups because Rosemary likes a man, Dick Diver, who is from the high-class group, but would still like to associate with the other group of people. This conflict is what led to the next conflict being the affair between Rosemary and Dick.
The actual affair between Rosemary and Dick made the novel interesting to read...
The novel was very well written and interesting to read. Fitzgerald does and excellent job developing the different conflicts throughout the novel. His use of the different groups of people is well related to how many groups are and act today. Which can be comparable to everyday life.

Teacher: Now, students, assessing literature will serve you in many ways in life, sharpening, as it does, your discernment, perception, and sense of truth. Tell me, Mr. Neff, why didn’t you like this book?

Walter: The characters seem shallow and unreal. In today’s world, do we really care about the problems of the so-called 1%? And this was published at the height of the Great Depression. I can’t imagine people had much compassion for the rich then either.

Barton: I don’t think it’s a problem of class, Walter. You should know from our insurance business that there are all kinds of characters and all sorts of tragedies to be found in any class. Writers from Dostoevsky to Shakespeare have captured the pathos of life among all levels of society. My “Little Man” (thumps his chest) tells me it’s a problem with the writer, not with society.

Phyllis: But Fitzgerald never gives us a reason to care about these frivolous people who lead very inconsequential lives. Going on and on about what they buy, what watering holes they frequent, what labels they drink, what European playgrounds they’re always taking off to at the drop of a hat does not add up to deep characterizations. (Adjusting her anklet) I couldn’t relate.

Harry: Half the time the story was so mixed up I couldn’t tell where the heck they were.

Billie: Or what they were doin’ there. After a while I didn’t even care where they went. Places ya never heard of.

Harry: And what does that goofy title mean, anyway?

Paul: What do you think it means?

Harry: It means he had a rough time coming up with names. Like those kids, “Topsy?” “ Lanier?" My achin' back. A grown woman named “Baby?” Was that some kinda joke?

Billie: Who talks all flowery like that? Nobody. I hadda look up a lotta words.

Paul: We have to take it on Fitzgerald’s say-so that Dick is a brilliant psychiatrist. He never shows us that in the book. The very few exchanges he has with a patient outside of his wife Nicole sound rather ridiculous, as you say Billie.

Billie: What about that skitzy…skezmo…that sickness in the head that she had? Does it ever just clear up like that as a person gets older? It didn’t seem to me like he helped her at all. She just got better by herself.

Ilsa: There are some beautiful, lyrical passages in the writing that definitely took me to the places described. They sounded lovely, like Paris, Rick.

Rick: Just heartrending. I could tear up. Look, if I read a book I want it to get right to the point. I have a café to run. I could break the binding of that book and throw the first 114 pages away. Nothing happened.

George: True. The structure of the book is clumsy and uneven. As you say, Mr. Blaine, the real story doesn’t get underway until Book 2. Why did you keep reading?

Rick: Every now and then I like to wallow in a bad book, just to marvel in lurid fascination at how bad it is.

Martha: You said it, Ricky-boy. All that dribble in the first part is nothing but that trashy little thing who thinks she’s a movie star throwing herself at Doctor Dick, who’s supposed to be somebody, but doesn’t seem like much--just like you, George. All washed up. (Finishes her drink.) And then when Book 2 starts we’re supposed to hear about No Action Dick all over again, his whole life and everything. By then, who cares? Pour me another, lover. Make it a double.

Sundance: I didn’t get the point.

Butch: You can read?

Eliza: It’s how the upper classes just crush the life out of us with their big fortunes and their high falutin’ ways, always taking common people for granted like dirt under their feet.

Henry: Well, Dick Diver is supposed to be quite extraordinary from what I understand, although I never quite see it, as Paul is saying.

Martha: You got it, professor.

Henry: I dare say his wife’s money does in the end have a corrupting influence on him, much as he tries to resist it, poor devil.

Alfred: Blarney. This Diver chap doesn’t try to resist it at all, mate. He just goes along enjoying himself in all those fancy places. Drinks hearty, he does, and well he should. He landed in a pot of gold.

Teacher: Does it seem, class, that Dr. Diver’s story is indeed a tragic one by the end? Were you moved to pity for him?

Scarlett: Fiddle-de-dee. That was no tragedy. What had he suffered?

Rhett: A man’s self-respect is all he’s got in the end, Scarlett.

Ashley: He should have walked away from his wife’s corrupting influence, but he didn’t have the strength. I can certainly understand that.

Alfred: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now. “We’re all intimidated, bought up.” That’s what we are. That’s what he was.

Melanie: I think that Mr. Fitzgerald’s story lacks heart. His written story, I mean. In life, perhaps he had too much heart.

Phyllis: Hardly. Sounds to me as if he lived a superficial life like his characters. Living beyond his means, trying to be what he wasn’t, dying young and broke as a drunk, with that Graham woman, not his wife, taking care of him. He was a loser.

Walter: Pretty harsh, Phyllis.

Martha: Shut up, you. She’s right. Do you know what Sheila Graham said about my last picture?

Paul: There’s also the issue of professional ethics in the book. A doctor courting and marrying a patient. That’s wrong.

Eliza: It’s just like I said. If you have money, you can do whatever you like.

Barton: The Warrens could buy a live-in doctor to take Nicole off their hands, ethics be damned. Diver fell for it, the sucker, much to his eventual regret. His dilemma of whether he should act as her husband or her doctor is tough to figure out. We never see how he reconciles it.

George: I guess that’s why he drank. I can relate.

Ilsa: I think he really loved her. Don’t you, Rick?

Harry: Nah, he dumped her.

Billie: Or she dumped him, fathead.

Rick: “Or she dumped him.” Right. Kind of reminds you of someone, doesn’t it, Ilsa?

Ilsa: Oh, Rick. She had to, in the end, don’t you see? She didn’t need him anymore.

Martha: He’d become a derelict by the end, holding her back. George, I told you I wanted a double!

Alfred: I’ll get you double. Let’s have a whopper!

Billie: This Fitzgerald guy. He was pretty wild, wasn’t he? I heard about all those goings-on during that Jazzy Age. And his wife went to the loony bin. He wasn’t a doctor or anything, I guess, but this book, it’s kinda his real-life story ain’t it?

Henry: Isn’t it.

Paul: Yes, Billie, there are a lot of elements taken from Fitzgerald’s own life, something the book was criticized for in some circles.

Ilsa: But he stood by Zelda. I mean, she was a handful, to be sure. But he came to Hollywood hoping to make money for her care. He tried to write your story, Scarlett.

Scarlett: Great balls of fire! I never saw him.

Rick: He didn’t get far. On your story, or on any of our stories. He was dead at 44, pickled.

Eliza: Booze got him. (Frowns at her father) Seen it a lot.

Paul: So we’re saying Fitzgerald was more famous for his flamboyant life style that epitomized a glamorous, if doomed, age, than for his actual writing ability?

Billie: “Flamboyant?” That a disease? (Reaches for her dictionary) "P-h-l-..."

George: With regard to this book, I’d say yes, we could certainly draw that conclusion. Doesn’t this conversation prove it? We’re talking more about Fitzgerald’s life now than his work.

Teacher: So, class, we agree? TENDER IS THE NIGHT is a failed novel by an overrated writer?

In unison: Yes, Miss Brodie.

Harry: Hey, what does that title mean, anyway?

*************************************************

Jean Brodie’s lit class attendance roster for Nov. 16:
' Walter Neff, Barton Keyes, Phyllis Dietrichson, DOUBLE INDEMNITY
' Harry Brock, Billie Dawn, Paul Verrall, BORN YESTERDAY
' Ilsa Lund, Rick Blaine, CASABLANCA
' George and Martha, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
' Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid
' Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins, Alfred Doolittle, MY FAIR LADY
' Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley, Melanie, GONE WITH THE WIND.

Great edition for kindle which is nearly as good as the great gatsby, i prefer this the 1934 edition than the laster reedited version. A very tumultuous and moving love story inspired by fitzgeralds own life.

The book was great. Honestly, for a required reading book, I really enjoyed it. I loved the way the three parts of the book finally made sense at the end. The relationship between Dick, Nicole and Rosemary is really cool. The ending is pretty good, even though I didn't expect them to get divorced.

I'm flabbergasted! A lot of the reviews on this book are mostly concerned with how hard it is to get something out of Fitzgerald's novel. Messy and incoherent, people seem to think. The point is that this is what it's all about. The world's recently fallen to pieces in what has become known as the Great War. Most of the characters in the novel are aware of this, in one way or another. Consequently, they too are falling to pieces. Hints about this are to be found everywhere in the book, although Fitzgerald often hides them in subtle ways. If you've read this book recently and found it difficult, I strongly advise you to reread it. This is not a book just to glance through.

Tender is the Night was a great novel! Many have compared it to The Great Gatsby, however, I would say that this book is much more complex and interesting and differs very much from it. The novel is very descriptive and catches my attention through is vivid explanation of the setting on the Riviera, and Dick and Nicole Diver's home, the Villa Diana. The novel maintains a sense of mystery in the beginning, and allows the reader to grasp a sense of the relationship of Dick and Nicole, and how the perfect appearance of Dick and Nicole masks their true struggles. The novel is a partially autobiographical novel about F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, and this emotional book becomes more and more intriguing until the last page. This book will be interesting to those who enjoy reading about the splendor of the 1920's and the beauty of the Riviera, while still analyzing a very wonderfully complex plot.

I hadn't read Tender Is the Night for at least a dozen years. Maybe more. Though I thought of it as one of my favorite books, I realized when I began re-reading it that I had forgotten much of the story. The one thing that was still fresh in my mind was the sense of tragedy I associated with Dick. By that I mean, I remembered him as a tragic figure. What was the source - arrogance, impatience, fatigue, attraction to money, alcohol? All of those? None of them? I'm not sure. I am sure that Dick is an intensely personal representation of Fitzgerald himself. Tommy Barban be damned. He's a charlatan. If nothing else, I can only hope Nicole realized how much she lost when she lost Dick.

Written with difficulty over a period of nine years, 'Tender Is The Night' (1934), the last novel F. Scott Fitzgerald published during his lifetime, was something of a critical and commercial failure upon its release at the height of the Depression. Though it has had many prominent public admirers over the decades, the book is a dull, strained, and rambling failure concerned with transparent, narcissistic characters, who, in a later era, might have comfortably stepped out of any of Sidney Sheldon' novels.

'Tender Is The Night' is sadly shorn of the maniacal spontaneity of initial Fitzgerald novel 'This Side of Paradise' (1920) and the depth that the first person narrative provided in 'The Great Gatsby' (1925). Though the peripheral characters find protagonists Dr. Dick Diver and his wife, Nicole, to be dazzling, irresistible, and dynamic, on the page they are so blandly drawn that each is barely discernable from the rest of the equally nondescript cast.

Diver, who is supposed to be a reputable psychiatrist, simply appears like a slightly more dapper cad among cads, and something of a fool.

The lives of these affluent men and women seem empty indeed; when not flattering one another or merrily drawing a firm line of exclusivity between themselves and the rest of humanity, the characters amuse themselves by making cutting and sardonic remarks about the hoi polloi. Shallow good manners, rather than substantive values, fuel their lives.

The extroverted Dick and Nicole Diver are initially portrayed as compulsive socializers who are locked into their public personas, which fit them as snugly as straight jackets; left alone together, the silence is deafening and the minutes yawn.

As if suffering an ethical failure, Fitzgerald appears to hold his unlikable characters and their lifestyles in high esteem, a factor that finally damns the book completely, since the collapse of Diver's sunlit house of cards is meant to represent a poignant tragedy.

Though some scholars believe that struggling Depression audiences simply weren't capable of focusing on a novel about the lives of the wealthy, the more probable reason is that the book is unenjoyable and feels concocted and self conscious at every turn.

And with good reason: during the period in which the book was written, Fitzgerald continually rearranged the novel's plot, theme, and focus as his own life became increasingly troubled and unsettled. This uneven patchwork approach is evident in both large and small ways, such as when naive but poised Hollywood ingenue Rosemary leaves a party and is inexplicably "shaken with audibly painful sobs," though four short, uneventful paragraphs later on the same page, Fitzgerald writes, "it was time for Rosemary to cry," apparently forgetting that Rosemary is crying already.

Throughout Book One, Fitzgerald moves haphazardly from vaguely-conceived scene to scene, overwriting but still failing to include the essential, and thus allowing what little credible plot there is to evaporate like a mirage.

Contrived set pieces involving a duel, a railway shooting, and a murder in a hotel--none of which add anything pertinent the plot--suggest that Fitzgerald simply didn't know how to proceed or express what he wanted to say.

Throughout Book One, the omnipresent narrator's point of view, like the characters whose story he relates, is pretentious and smugly inauthentic; Abe North's mouth, for example, is characterized in terms of its "inability to endure boredom," while in another scene, the group, eyeing the casual behavior of strangers, discusses the reasons why Diver "is the only sober man" in the world capable of "repose," a quality they apparently hold in inestimable regard.

When Diver is briefly accosted by a strange man while waiting on a Paris street corner, rather than state this plainly, Fitzgerald writes, "After three-quarters of an hour of standing around, he became suddenly involved in a human contact."

Though a discernable plot remains elusive and the characters are ghostly and insubstantial, Fitzgerald repeatedly focuses on the extraneous: when Diver scribbles out a check drawn from questionable funds, Fitzgerald writes, "As he wrote he engrossed himself in the material act, examining meticulously the pen, writing laboriously upon the high glass-topped desk."

The more prosaically written Book Two reveals that Fitzgerald had little genuine insight or hard knowledge about psychology, despite references to Freud, Jung, Bleuler, and Adler, though he continues to offer poorly expressed pseudo-philosophical insights such as "He knew, though, that the price of his intactness was incompleteness."

Not only does Fitzgerald make the common mistake of identifying schizophrenia as "split personality," but the closest the author comes in attempting to describe mental illness is "a cousin happened upon her mad and gone."

As if hoping to correct the structural errors of the first section, Book Two compresses so much explicit activity in its pages that events degenerate into a series of convenient and unbelievable coincidences. There are passages of unintentional hilarity, such as "He was beaten to death in a speakeasy in New York. He just managed to crawl home to the Racquet Club to die," suggesting that even on the very lip of perdition, Fitzgerald's diehard characters are glorious snobs to the end.

With 'Tender Is The Night,' Fitzgerald played an ostensibly clever, dangerous, and deceptive game. The omnipresent narrator's point of view in Book One is clearly colored by Rosemary's naive and idealized perception of the Divers, thus making the objective truth about the couple impossible to ascertain.

Book Two, which adopts an entirely more factual tone, then peels away the false and badly-expressed glamour and purports to reveal the rot beneath the shimmering surface.

But Rosemary's presence doesn't explain Book One's narrative pretensions or the manner in which Fitzgerald has misled the reader in an attempt to produce what he calculates will later become a tragically ironic effect.

But since the lives the Divers appear to lead in Book One is spurious at best, Fitzgerald's gambit falls flat.

The novel Tender is the Night by F.Scott Fitzgerald, a tragic romance, is about a young 18 year-old actress named Rosemanry Hoyt, and her realtionship with the Diver's, an American couple. Their realtionship starts off with a growing friendship, which leads to Dick's (the husband)downfall and causing his wife to marry another man. The setting allows the reader to understand life during the 1920's before the time of the Depression, with close attention to characters and how our ways of living have evolved since the 1920's. F.Scott Fitzgerald uses a style of writing to fit both the time period and the setting of the novel.
With F.Scott Fitzgerald being born in 1896, he has first hand knowledge about a time period important to our country's history that most of can only read about. He depicts the life of a young actress trying to fulfill her dream and a sophistaicated couple whose wealth forces them to live a life that they do not desire, and have to be people that are not. Dick is a brilliant psychiatrist who has an affair on his wife who enters into many clinics for a mental breakdown brought on by sexual abuse from her father. I can see why the novel may have received mixed reviews in 1933 when it was published. Even though life during the 1920's is depicted (in which it seems to me) accurately, but the plot of the novel is not what you would expect. I believe that it is a good novel, but not everyone would want to read this type of novel. If you can read this novel and enjoy it, you will recieve knowledge from it

What a difference the edition makes. The re-ordered sections change the entire pacing. The original version, published in 1934 echews the chronological narrative and packs a different punch. Revised in the early 50s (posthumously), the later version is easier to follow, but loses a bit in the build up.

A classic either way - perhaps strong than Gatsby.

To be blunt, there is no plot. I hate to be overly critical, but if Herman Schwartz (ficticious name) had written this novel, it never would have seen a printing press. What I mean by "well written" is that you will be able to identify the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald was certainly a talented writer. His phraseology is excellent and insightfull (hence the extra star). The problem is that there really isn't much of a story here. If this book is sold on audio, it should come with a warning to not drive while listening as it could cause the listener to slip into a coma while driving! Basically, it chronicles much of his own life with his wife who also struggled with mental illness, much like the wife of Dick in the story. Ernest Hemingway held the novel in high regard, but his opinion was biased as he enjoyed a close friendship with Fitzgerald. The esteemed Mr. Fitzgerald would have done much better to confine his struggles to a diary away from the public. As such a capable writer, he could have done much better than this. Final analysis: boring and disappointing.

Tender Is the Night is by far the greatest literary work of Fitzgerald's time. His use of vivid description and imagery is breathtaking. I could not put this book down! Fitzgerald created characters in this novel which were so complex you feel as though you already know them. Tender Is the Night is sexy while heartbreaking, adventurous while thought-provoking. The story of the love, and loss, between the wealthy Dick and Nicole Diver, and how their lives together are forever changed by the young Rosemary Hoyt. This book is for anyone who has ever felt love, lust, joy, or sorrow. If you like The Great Gatsby, you will absolutely adore Tender Is the Night.

This is a classic Fitzgerald tale seemingly lauding money and carefree lifestyle, but revealing the true depths of such a lifestyle. No one pulls off this style of shallowness followed by the depths of despair in reality. Closest to this would be brief excerpts of Hemingway in To Have and To Have Not.

Through the narrative, it's clear that Fitzgerald cannot choose which character to develop, and in the end, none is explored satisfactorily. As a panorama of failed marriage, "Tender" lacks the strength of "The Beautiful and Damned", which I consider to be similar and superior, though less popular.

But still, F. Scott Fitzgerald is F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the writing is wondrous, but this is not his quintessential book.

If the absurdist movement is regaining steam in American culture, this explains the resurgence of popularity in this novel, which though strong in the first third, turns out as an unsatisfying mess.

Tender is the Night, for me, this book was painful to read. The style in which F. Scott Fitzgerald writes is too descriptive and drawn out for my taste. The messages the book had were pretty deep and sometimes hard for me to spot or understand. After reading the book, I used sparksnotes.com to help me with some of the book's symbolism. Once I understood more of what was going on and what happened, I appreciated the book a little bit more. It was interesting to see the change that the main characters go though, especially Dick Diver. His original intentions were to become a great doctor and cure Nicole, his wife. But he ends up not succeeding and becoming bored with his life. The only way that Nicole is cured is by his downfall. The book was also interesting because of the author wrote it in 3 different sections or books, all with different viewpoints and overlaping stories.

In conclusion, this book was hard for me to understand in the beginning, but once I was able to realize what was going on, I enjoyed it more. I didn't like the style of writing or even the subject and theme of the book, but it was worth reading it because it exposed me to a different style of writing and a different type of book that I usually wouldn't read

Fitzgerald's writing style is brilliant in places here, and I found it fascinating to see how he built up some of the novel's themes -- especially that of wealthy American tourists invading war-scarred Europe. At one point, he writes something about a nation (the U.S.) that had spent the last ten years (1918-1928) wanting nothing more than amusement: Just wait a few decades! But I didn't have much sympathy for Dr. Diver, who I felt was ruined more by his own self-pity than by his marriage. And therefore, I didn't find much point in reading about his downward spiral.

I purchased all six of these books from the Canadian the store website (the store.ca) several weeks ago because I couldn't bear to wait any longer for them to show up on the American site.

The covers are just gorgeous. The art is metallic and beautiful and the covers have a soft feel to them. The inside flap of the cover is perforated and is designed to be removed and used as a matching bookmark.

The cover art for this set of F. Scott Fitzgerald books was designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith - the genius behind the similarly beautiful Penguin cloth-bound classics series. Not only is the literature itself classic, but the books look like a classic collector's item as well! Friends compliment me on them all the time when they see them on my bookcase!

Unlike another reviewer, I have no issue with the text in my copies. It is clear and dark throughout, and definitely doesn't look faded or photocopied. Also, I can confirm that the introductions to the other Fitzgeralds in the series are written by different authors than the author of the introduction to Tender is the Night.

Read my full review below, I just would like to make one ammendment - it seems my words might have been edited a small bit for space and I just want to make one thing clear - I recommend skipping the first portion of the book, makes it a much better read.

WHile it did not enjoy the acclaim of it's prodeccesor, The Great Gatsy, Fitzgerald succeds once more in capturing the melancholy, self-disapassionated apathy of post-world war one america. WHile the the tangled lives of the DIvers are in themselves intersting enough to drive the story, it is Fitzgerald's astounding capacity to capture human interactions that makes it wonderful.

Some of my all-time favorite literary quotes and passages come from this work. If you love the works of the early 20th century, there is no reason why you wouldn't read this book and have it included with your adventure. You'll love it from beginning to end and eventually fall in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald himself. Be warned - haha.

based on what I had read about it, but I did not. There were parts that I liked, passages that are well-written, but overall the writing is stilted and the narrative choppy. There is an air of self-importance in the narrative itself that rivals that of the characters, which has the effect of downplaying their snobbery. There are also a few instances in Book 1 where Fitzgerald felt the need to tell the reader about, even though he had already shown, Rosemary's naivete. I also agree with the reviewers who said that Fitzgerald failed in presenting the psychology of Nicole's illness accurately.

I tried to read this because it's a standard of the American novel in the 20s. But I could not finish it. The characters are rich, spoiled, glamorous and fascinating to each other. But that's all. Imagine a novel length fantasy written for a Hollywood gossip magazine. That's what you have here.

The writing is occasionally striking, but there is nothing in it that I want to read about.

I think it was Hemingway who quoted Fitzgerald as saying "The rich are different from you and me." Papa's answer: "Yeah, they have more money." That sums it up quite well.

I was excited to start this book at first. The story started off somewhat slow. Not till I started the middle of the book then it started to get exciting. The ending did not turn out how I expected. Overall, I felt depressed after reading this story.

I liked F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing because of its metaphors and imagery that enable the reader to get a real sense of what is happening to the characters. The characters that he creates are also fascinating. However, I found parts of the storyline to be confusing. The book jumps around in time which was also a little confusing. On a scale of A to F, I would give this book an A-. It is a really great book and I strongly recommend it.

I first read this novel 25 years ago. Its brilliant use of our language made me want to become a writer. Now, that is my profession. And each time I read TENDER IS THE NIGHT again, I am stunned by its beauty; and my early aspiration to be as fine a writer as Fitzgerald is renewed.

Notwithstanding the outstanding quality of Fitzgerald's other novels, this one is definitely not a must read. The plot drags along wearily at places, settings and places are not always well captured (Fitzgerald's sketch of the Riviera life does not really convince me), characters are weakly drawn, undecisive, some caricatures. The life of the main protagonists of the story does not offer enough interest in order to keep the reader interested in them for such a long novel. Except maybe you are specifically interested in psychiatrist maladies. It is neither a tragedy nor a humorous book nor just a tantalizing story, but an unsuccessful mixture of all three. Read The Great Gatsby to get the best of Fitzgerald. The book spent three years on my shelf after being bought and having read the first 30 something pages, and justly so.

Tender is the Night is a novel of bourgeoise boredom. The book has a very promising premise - what would happen if a young psychiatrist was to marry his rich and beautiful but unstable patient? Big fat conflict, just like the size of the book might suggest? No dice - an occasional glimpse of genious sinks in a routine and boring ramblings about the characters' life in high society. I was really dissapointed. So I advise everybody to start with the Great Gatsby, I hear it's much better and I know now that Tender is the Night is a bad book.

For those of you who are Fitzgerald fans, this is a book that captures an individual's inner struggles and demons. Fitzgerald is always adept at identifying the weaknesses and aches of even the most 'powerful' or 'together' person. A book of substance and easy to read.

Fitzgerald is one of the most interesting authors ever, and you will enjoy how his real life parallels the characters in this book. I would reccommend reading this book slowly so that you can follow the plot and really get into it. If you liked Gatsby, you will surely love Tender Is the Night.. the Gatsby of a different color.

I loved this book, as I do all of Fitzgerald's works, especially "The Great Gatsby." You can't go wrong with any of his books.The beauty of this book is that Fitzgerald's elegant prose flows so nicely into the story being told. It is wonderfully written, but not distractinly so. Five stars for a perfect book.

Because Tender is the Night is a novel without any central conflict (such as the well-known story of Forest Gump), I didn't find it to have any real point. There was no central theme to tie it all together and teach something about life. The imagery and detail was phenomenal, and every aspiring author should aspire to his level of diction, but the plot left something to be desired.
First of all the characters' morality is certainly lacking. Dick has an affair with a budding young actress (Rosemary), has a drinking problem, doesn't care about his children, and seems out to insult everyone he comes across. Nicole has a history of mental illness, which resulted from incest with her father, cares nothing for her children, creates a plenitude of problems for her husband, and eventually has an affair with Tommy Barban - who she later marries after divorcing Dick.
Second, Dick and Nicole Diver seem to live in a fantasy world where money is never lacking, they can always stay in the poshest hotels, and mingle with the elite of American society abroad. Everyone seems to know the Divers, and have an opinion of them. Even the Great Depression seems not to have fazed them even though much of Nicole's family money was invested in America. The only conflicts they have are with each other. This results in a distance from the rest of the world and a profound internalization of conflict.
Not only are the main characters morally bankrupt, the entire world is as well. As Dick and Nicole travel they come in contact with murderers, the violent, the intensely selfish, the alcoholics, and the insane of two continents. There is no `guiding light,' no `shining example' to reveal their decay by contrast.
Lastly, there is no concrete conclusion and readers are left hanging, waiting for closure. I felt vaguely dissatisfied for several days after finishing this book because there was no resolution of conflict.
While the characters are astoundingly complex and realistic, they are set into an improbable world and dubious plot twists. Fitzgerald has a phenomenal ability to transport readers to the worlds in his books, but, unfortunately, the world in this novel is not one that most would care to visit.

I gave up at page 85. I'm sorry, I tried, but I just can't get through this dragging ponderously written story where nothing important happens and the text jumps around without completing a line of thought!

I had been reading Hemingway and thought I might as well read Fitzgerald. Oh dear. What a waste of time. I read 3/4 of the book and threw it in the dump. I fully agree with another reviewer. Fitzgerald on one book in him...and this was not it!

A classic read. I was required to read this in High School and was not a fan at that young age, but with my increasing years comes appreciation for classic literature. Quite honestly, this is a fine novel from an American master. I'd recommend it to every reading aficionado whom appreciates the classic authors. I have read just about all of what most would consider the "great" works of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and other masters. This one ranks very highly in my library.

Enjoy.

I am not a big fan of F.Scott Fitzgerald's, but I do believe he had genuine talent. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald's talent is sorely lacking in this novel, Tender is the Night. The characters are neither attractive or entirely believeable, and the jerky transitions from scenes and time frames are exhausting to follow. I regret to agree 100% with Hemmingway's scathing review of this novel. Fitzgerald fans should check out the movie version of Tender is the Night starring Jennifer Jones and Jason Robards to appreciate what Fitzgerald may have been aiming for in his novel of love and the unintentioned consequences of a mismatched couple.

This classic novel was Fitzgerald's favorite of all that he had written and with good reason: the main characters were modeled after him and his wife Zelda. Set mainly on the Riveria and in Switzerland, it shows how the small crack in a marriage widens causing the marriage to fall apart, perhaps irrevocably.

The book opens in 1925 with Rosemary Hoyt going to the beach at the Riveria. She is traveling with her mother touring Europe's warm climate after suffering an illness doing a movie. She is just about to turn eighteen and gets invited to join the Divers' party after spending a day with the boring other crowds of Americans there. The Divers, Nicole and Dick are captivating, especially Dick. But there is also Mary and Abe North, who is a musician who hasn't composed anything in years and drinks too much, and Tommy Barden who keeps running off to a war somewhere to fight and is in love with Nicole.

Rosemary and her mother had only planned on staying for a few days, but Rosemary finds herself falling in love with Dick, so they extend their stay. Dick resists her for as long as he can but soon he gives in as long as Nicole never knows and there's a reason why she must never know. The book is divided into three parts and the second part goes back and shows how Nicole and Dick came to be together.

You don't want to feel sorry for Dick and pull for him, but for a while, you kind of do. Maybe it's because the point of view becomes his. Also, Nicole is seen as a bit of a succubus who sucks the life out of Dick. But Nicole is the wronged party and the one hurt by these events. This situation will have long-term repercussions that will continue to affect their marriage and widen the crack further. This book is a classic for a reason, it is well written with beautiful colorful language that drips from the page. It is very well worth reading.

Quotes
Tell a secret over the radio, publish it in a tabloid, but never tell it to a man who drinks more than three or four a day.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night p 75)

It was often easier to give a show than to watch one.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night p 89)

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, (Tender is the Night p 167)

Either one learns politeness at home or the world teaches it to you with a whip and you get hurt in the process.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night p 255)