With the popularity of Fitzgerald, it's difficult to comprehend that he only wrote four novels, this being the last. It's a dark novel because it was written at a dark time in his life. Zelda's illness, financial problems, and alcoholism all contributed to Fitzgerald's frame of mind. I've read several negative reviews of this novel here on Goodreads saying it is depressing, the characters are shallow and unlikeable. That may be partly true, but their struggles and problems, their desires and betrayals, are what make them so compelling and so real. One has to take context into consideration when reading a novel, especially the time period when the novel was written and set. Also the mentality of this set of people and the lifestyle they lived is almost incomprehensible to the average person today. It was a great read for me. I give it 4.5 stars, I can't quite put it on the same level as The Great Gatsby.

I am trying to like this book because for some reason I think that I should.
But, in truth, I am finding it quite dull and painfully slow.
Maybe I lack in patience or sophistication, because--given other reviews of this book--there is a good chance I am missing something (or simply haven't read enough into it yet--apparently it gets good after the tedious first 100 pages...)
But so far, I am pretty seriously bored and disintersted in his saga about rich people, poor misunderstood movie stars and their shallow love affairs, dull parties and dumb problems. I keep thinking of that Edie Sedgwick movie for some reason...(no offense to Edie or Andy, or Scott for that matter!)
Every once in a while there is a great line though, so, hey.
And, I do so love the name of this book--five stars for that at least!

OK, now I feel justified in my dislike of this book:
their night: by bukowski
"never could read Tender Is the
Night
but they've made a
tv adaptation of the
book
and it's been running
for several
nights
and i have spent
ten minutes
here and there
watching the troubles of
the rich
while they are leaning
against their beach chairs
in Nice
or walking about their
large rooms
drink in hand while
making philosophical
statements
or
fucking up
at the
dinner party
or the
dinner dance
they really have no
idea
of what to do with
themselves:
swim?
tennis?
drive up the
coast?
find
new beds?
lose old
ones?
or
fuck with the
arts and the
artists?

having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for.

the rich are different
all right

so is the ring-
tailed
maki and the
sand
flea."

Thanks Hank (and Rob!) :)

In 1932, F Scott Fitgerald was living in suburban Baltimore. His father had recently died and his wife Zelda had been committed to a psychiatric institution in Switzerland. He finally decided that the novel on which he had been working on and off since the publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925 would be about the destruction of a man of great promise through an ill-judged marriage. In writing the novel, Fitzgerald liberally used material from his life. This material included his relationship with Zelda, their life together in France, the life-style of wealthy American expatriates Gerald and Sara Murphy, the death of his father, his alcoholism, what he had learned about psychiatry since Zelda had her first mental breakdown, and his despair at what he considered to be the waste of his potential as a writer.

The novel which emerged from this extraordinarily difficult period in Fitzgerald's life is not easy to read. At first I thought I didn't want to keep reading, so little did I care about the characters and their concerns. However, when the narrative moved into flashback, detailing the circumstances leading up to the marriage of the central characters, Dick and Nicole Driver, I became interested in the narrative and that interest was sustained until the end.

Knowing that this is the most autobiographical of Fitzgerald's works and understanding a little about the circumstances under which he wrote it adds poignancy to the reading experience. Fitzgerald clearly felt very sorry for himself, but from that self-pity was born a powerful and haunting novel.

“Dick percepiva l’infelicità di Nicole e avrebbe voluto bere la pioggia che le sfiorava le guance”.

(Rilettura).

n  She (Nicole) smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself, for so little, for the beat of a response, the assurance of a complimentary vibration in him.

..Rosemary smiled at Dick – that smile as if they two together had managed to get rid of all the trouble in the world and were now at peace in their own heaven. n

If there was an award for the most alluring, memorable smiles, Fitzgerald's characters would be some of the top contenders. It's hard to forget Jay Gatsby's rare smile with a quality of eternal reassurance that understood you the way you wanted to be understood

Tender is the night has vivid characters, largely based on the Fitzgeralds and gorgeous prose to complement their complex dynamics. However, I felt that the second and third parts of this novel are better written than the first where the prose becomes too descriptive and even extravagant sometimes. Perhaps 'The Great Gatsby' in its perfect brevity seems more put together in comparison.

The first few pages are a drag with an abundance of minor characters creating clutter on a beach in the French Riviera. Things start getting better once the spotlight shines on the Divers, the "it" couple from America, inspiring admiration in the most cynical of hearts –Dick with his effortless appeal and Nicole with her exquisite beauty. In the first part of the book, Hollywood starlet Rosemary Hoyt, all of eighteen, is smitten with them; we observe the glamorous duo through her innocent eyes which idolize Dick as the perfect man – charismatic, well-bred, handsome, irreproachable, all-understanding, and all-forgiving. His inherent charm, self-assuredness, and an almost desperate need to be adored make him a crowd-pleaser with a power of arousing a fascinated and uncritical love.

Roughly six years before Rosemary upsets their world, the Divers begin their journey together. Dick, an up-and-coming young psychiatrist, falls for his young schizophrenic patient Nicole and ends up marrying her, providing her with the stability and emotional nourishment she needs to get better. Nicole's past trauma and the ensuing fragility make her dependent on Dick and in the early years of their togetherness, she looks up to him in the same way a child might adore a parent – all the more relevant in her case as she lacks the security that parental bonds provide. In the second and third parts of the novel, we see their relationship through their own eyes, flowering and fading over the course of time as they grow and change as people. As Dick moves into his late 30s, his career and self-worth go down the drain with his uncontrolled decline into alcoholism. The psychological games and fooling around only precipitate this downturn. His fall from grace is a depressing story of regret over squandered potential, bitterness from failure, and a wistful longing for lost youth.In fact, Dick's fascination with youth could be seen in his attraction toward Rosemary, his increased attention toward his children when they are more grown-up, and most notably his refusal to acknowledge that he is past his prime.

Over the years, Nicole's condition improves and she becomes more self-reliant with little need of Dick's increasingly shaky anchor. The fragility transforms into hardness; even her beauty is compared to a hard and chiseled diamond with sharp edges. Her gradual disillusionment with Dick is evident – she now thinks of him no more than a bitter failure and a pitiful social blur.

This grand ode to the decadence of the 1920s questions the integrity of people and relationships one looks up to with absolute trust – whether it is the corruption of Dr. Dick Diver, the heinous, damaging act of Nicole's father or even the blatant unconcern of Rosemary's mother who condones her young daughter's increasing closeness with the married Dr. Diver.

I'm not sure if I would ever revisit this book, but now I want to get my hands on "Save Me the Waltz" to understand Zelda Fitzgerald's take on their life together.

A good novel is like a good wine..

After finishing it, it will leave you with a wonderful aftertaste in your mouth!!

Exactly this is what happened to me with Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald..

Fitzgerald worked on Tender is the Night for almost 9 years, but after publication it flopped..
Although he had great hope and put his whole soul in it..

It was not received well by the readers, and it became a commercial failure..

Nevertheless after reading this masterpiece, I want to read more by Fizgerald!!
In fact, I will continue my readings with another of his novels..

But let gets started:

Rosemary Hoyt, a young and pretty filmstar falls in love with Dick Diver a handsome psychiatrist..
Dicks wife Nicole is beautiful and very wealthy, but has issues with mental illness!!

Beginning at the French Riviera Fitzgerald introduces and gives us a privy look at the world of the very rich and famous with his glittering facades and hollow vanities..

And he also managed to wrap up difficult themes like incest, alcoholism, racism, murder, mental illness and adultery!!

The writing is superb, poetic, powerful and captivating!!
You will read senteces so full of beauty and poetry as only Fitzgerald could create them..

I'm still pondering about the fictional characters in his novel, as if they were living persons!!
Tender is the Night has stirred strong emotions deep in me, and has raptured me far away to other worlds..

And let me also say that Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my absolute highlights at goodreads for this year!!

Full recommendation to all my goodreads friends with five glittering stars!!

Dean;)

just finished a new favourite book in the early hours of my birthday

Tender Is the Night is a flowery derision of the beautiful people’s world and a bitter tale of ruination.
There are man and wife living in comfort and luxury…
She is enigmatic and beautiful…

She sat in the car, her lovely face set, controlled, her eyes brave and watchful, looking straight ahead toward nothing. Her dress was bright red and her brown legs were bare. She had thick, dark, gold hair like a chow’s.

He is courageous and beautiful…

Save among a few of the tough-minded and perennially suspicious, he had the power of arousing a fascinated and uncritical love. The reaction came when he realized the waste and extravagance involved. He sometimes looked back with awe at the carnivals of affection he had given, as a general might gaze upon a massacre he had ordered to satisfy an impersonal blood lust.

Then a seductress arrives… The girl is adolescently naïve and beautiful…

Her fine forehead sloped gently up to where her hair, bordering it like an armorial shield, burst into lovelocks and waves and curlicues of ash blonde and gold. Her eyes were bright, big, clear, wet, and shining, the color of her cheeks was real, breaking close to the surface from the strong young pump of her heart. Her body hovered delicately on the last edge of childhood – she was almost eighteen, nearly complete, but the dew was still on her.

But there is no love triangle really… Everything is entertainment and fun: crazy drinking bouts, curious drunken escapades, extravagant jolly trips, lavish shopping sprees… So many open roads for the asking… But all those roads go to mirages and emptiness…
And emptiness is a mire – first it sucks one in and then it sucks out one’s soul.

Tender Is the Night is actually--believe it or not, I did graduate high school--my introduction to the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I read this for a Dive Bar Book Club I've joined, partly to spur me into reading authors like Fitzgerald. I only finished the first third. When the story transitioned away from Jazz Age starlet Rosemary Hoyt and onto the author surrogate Dick Diver, I started to skim. Most of you will recognize these symptoms. I didn't connect to the material at all. There's magnificent writing here but "story" I missed. I'll try Fitzgerald's short stories.

How is one to feel about a protagonist who frequently displays signs of elitism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia, finds himself worryingly attracted to young girls, has no goal in life except to make himself useful to damsels in distress, and drinks away his career and marriage, ending up a mere shadow of his former self? Is one supposed to regard him as a tragic hero? Is one to sympathise with him? And if one does sympathise with him, is that because of the way he was written, or rather because we are aware that he is a thinly veiled version of the author himself, a giant of early-twentieth American literature?

Those were some of the questions I pondered after reading Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald's last finished novel, and possibly his most autobiographical one. Set in France and Italy in the 1920s, it tells the story of two wealthy American expats, Dick and Nicole Diver (largely based on the author and his wife Zelda), who seem to others the most glamorous couple ever, 'as fine-looking a couple as could be found in Paris', but are finding their private lives increasingly less glamorous. We first see the couple through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, a young and naive American actress holidaying in Europe. Rosemary falls madly in love with suave Dick, but also admires angelic Nicole. After about 130 pages during which Rosemary hangs out with the Divers and nearly embarks on an affair with Dick, the narrative stops and goes back in time to tell the story of Dick and Nicole's marriage, which is considerably more complicated than Rosemary realises. Nicole, it turns out, has a history of mental illness, and Dick is both her husband and the doctor treating her -- a recipe for disaster, obviously.

Being a tale of needy people, broken relationships, loss of purpose and wasted potential, Tender Is the Night is quite a depressing read, and one's appreciation of it largely depends on one's tolerance for that kind of thing. If you like your books bleak and tragic, chances are you'll appreciate Tender Is the Night. If not, you might want to steer clear of it.

I generally love a good tragedy, but I confess I wasn't overly impressed with Tender Is the Night. For a book which has garnered so many rave reviews, I found it remarkably flawed. Fitzgerald himself seems to have somewhat agreed with me. Despite referring to Tender Is the Night as his masterpiece and being shocked by its lack of critical and commercial success, he began reconstructing it a few years before his death, placing the flashback chapters at the beginning and making all the textual alterations required by this change. However, he died before he could finish the project, or perhaps he abandoned the project as not worth completing (no one seems to know for sure). A friend of his, Malcolm Cowley, then completed the revision, and for years this was the standard edition of the book. However, the Cowley version has fallen into scholarly disfavour (or so Penguin informs me), and several publishers, Penguin included, now use the first edition, the one that Fitzgerald thought needed revision. Apparently, there are no fewer than seventeen versions of the novel extant, which says much about how satisfied Fitzgerald was with his own work. My guess? Not very much.

I read a version based on the first edition of the book, and to be honest, I can see why Fitzgerald felt it needed some work. Tender Is the Night felt very disjointed to me. To a certain extent, this was because of the aforementioned non-linear structure, which felt a bit jarring to me. However, as far as I'm concerned, that is not the book's only problem, nor even its biggest one. What most annoyed me was the way in which the perspective keeps shifting. Fitzgerald uses an omniscient narrator in Tender Is the Night, but not consistently so; the story is always written from a certain character's perspective. Sometimes the perspective is Rosemary's, sometimes it's Dick or Nicole's; even the minor characters have stretches of the story told from their perspectives, often on the same page as a main character's perspective. To me, these shifts in point of view often felt haphazard, not to mention a little jarring. I didn't think they were particularly effective, either, as they hardly build on each other and don't provide any information that couldn't be gleaned from a 'regular' omniscient narrator. I may be in a minority here, but I think the book would have benefited from a more consistent approach to perspective.

The story itself is a bit haphazard, as well. It occasionally drags, it has little plot, and there are quite a few scenes and storylines which don't really go anywhere. Among several other seemingly unlikely scenes, the book contains a murder, a shooting and a duel, none of which is fully integrated into the story, and none of which is given proper significance. Scenes are introduced and then left so randomly that you have to wonder why Fitzgerald bothered to include them at all. At the risk of being unkind and judgemental, I guess that's what being an alcoholic will do for an author: it gives you wild ideas, but prevents you from carrying them out properly.

Which brings me to the characterisation. I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but I felt that Fitzgerald's vaunted characterisation was a bit 'off' in this novel. Many of the minor characters are sketchily drawn, whereas the main characters are described well (sometimes brilliantly so), but never properly explained. While Fitzgerald does a good (and occasionally excellent) job of sharing his protagonists' feelings, he hardly ever bothers to explain their motivations. This particularly bothered me in the parts written from Dick Diver's point of view, as Dick is supposed to be a psychiatrist. By rights, he should be analysing people actions and motivations all the time, and asking lots of questions. However, Dick hardly ever asks questions. He does not even ask himself questions. He never wonders why he is so drawn to young girls, or what it is in him that causes him to need to be their saviour. He just observes other people in a way of which any intelligent person (trained psychologist or not) would be capable, and then describes their behaviour in a few felicitous phrases. For this and other reasons, I didn't buy Dick Diver as a psychiatrist. Fitzgerald may have read up on psychology (and undoubtedly learned a lot from the doctors who treated his own wife), but I never found his alter ego convincing as a psychiatrist, let alone a brilliant psychiatrist. To me, Dick has 'writer' written all over him.

It's a pity I kept finding such flaws, because Tender Is the Night obviously had the potential to be amazing. It has all the right ingredients: interesting (albeit snobbish and bored) characters, powerful themes, evocative (albeit frequently vague) writing, you name it. And the story certainly doesn't lack in pathos. It is quite harrowing to watch Dick Diver, a supposedly brilliant and popular man who never lives up to his potential and is increasingly torn asunder by money, alcoholism and his failed marriage to a mentally ill woman, go to pieces, becoming, in his own words, 'the Black Death' ('I don't seem to bring people happiness any more'). The fact that this was Fitzgerald writing about himself, about his own frustrations and shattered dreams, adds considerable poignancy to the reading experience. Even so, Tender Is the Night ended up leaving me fairly cold, as I simply didn't care for Dick enough to be genuinely moved by his descent into failure. While others may find Dick a swell guy, I myself found his complacency and lack of purpose grating, his alcoholism exasperating, and his brilliance skin-deep. I seem to be alone in this opinion, but I stand by it.

In summary, then, I enjoyed and admired aspects of Tender Is the Night, but I don't think they add up to a great whole. While I appreciate Fitzgerald's brutal honesty and the masterful way in which he evokes mutual dependence, isolation and frustration, I can't shake off the feeling that the book could have been much better than it ended up being. And this pains me, as I hate wasted potential as much as Fitzgerald himself seems to have done. As it is, Tender Is the Night is in my opinion not just a book about wasted potential, but an example of wasted potential. It is fitting, I suppose, but no less disappointing for that.

3.5 stars, rounded down to three because I really didn't like it as much as many of the books I have given four stars lately.

We first meet Dick and Nicole Diver on the beach in the south of France. They are a golden couple, beautiful and rich. All those around them are slightly in awe, especially Rosemary Hoyt, a very young actress who immediately convinces herself she’s fallen in love with Dick.
The Divers epitomise cool, they are self assured, well travelled and fashionable - they belong to a set of well off Americans who drift around Europe, sometimes with purpose, some times indolently.
Rosemary is accepted into the Diver’s set and is one of several important characters that float in and out of the narrative - a narrative that meanders lazily in the sun, occasionally punctuated by short bursts of violence or high drama.
Tender is the Night plays out in the post WWI world of the Jazz Age ‘..... the broken universe of wars ending ....’ as Americans flood into Europe, rich, confident, sometimes flashy and Europeans emerge jaded and blinking from the shadows of conflict.
This is a tale of inappropriate relationships and marriage breakdown, of facades crumbling and dreams fading.
Aspects of the author’s own life are inevitably woven into the storyline ...... failed love, infidelity, alcoholism, the spectre of mental illness and a constant preoccupation with money.
Knowing a little about Fitzgerald, much of the story felt raw and desperate. There’s a sadness that grows throughout the book and lingers after turning the the last page (or reaching 99%!)
Some of the text is a bit wordy and whole dissertations could be written (and have been!) about the questionable attitudes of characters concerning race, gender, politics etc ........ but I love Fitzgerald’s writing, the lyricism, the soul bearing melancholy, and the sense of time and place.
This is my second reading of this novel after many years and I enjoyed it a lot.

To me this is the best work of Scott Fitzgerald. It's his most elaborated story. The core theme is the disintegration of a person through alcohol and relationship problems. There are some discrepancies in the structure of the novel, but it's a very nice read. Rating 3.5 stars.