Tender is the Night

Book is so tedious and boring. I cannot connect with the characters and the plot is nonexistent.

I read this around the time I read Zelda Fitzgerald by Nancy Mitford. You could almost hear the dialogue between Zelda and Scott in these pages. Although a fictional account, it's an honest portrait of a doomed marriage.

It feels incomplete, awesome story and caracter build up only to destroy it all at the end. Unexpected ending but not in the best way.

To Roy

Tender is the Night is F. Scott Fitzgerald's last completed novel and his most personal. It explores the marital life of the Drivers, Nicole and Dick—their union and ultimate downfall.
The characters are deeply influenced by Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, who was suffering from schizophrenia.
This lends a strong bias toward Dick's perspective and vices: his resentment toward Nicole, his guilt for feeling that way, his self-hatred for failing to meet his own ambitions and eventually turning to alcohol for an escape.
The other characters largely serve as plot devices, fading in significance next to the Drivers.
This book feels messy and raw, more like a therapy journal than a carefully structured novel. Unlike Fitzgerald's other works, which hold a window to the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age, Tender is the Night holds up a mirror to the author himself.

Hmm. After reading and loving The Great Gatsby, I was looking forward to reading this, however I don't think it is coherent enough to reach those heights. Despite this, there are flashes of brilliance (hence the 4 stars) - I just wish it was able to maintain them throughout.

The first third of this book is an evocative portrayal of the life of a group of American upper and upper-middle class people on the French Riviera in the 1920's, at the cusp of it becoming a summer tourist destination (the implication being that these people made it the destination it became). The description of the interactions and dinner parties are enthralling.

After this however, it descends into a far less involving description of the evolution of the main couple's relationship. It also has a habit of switching through multiple viewpoints almost in the same paragraph, which is distracting. I also suspect that the language and context has not aged well, which makes some of the events that are meant to be important seem remarkably trivial (an alcoholic is largely signposted by their occasional faux-pas at parties, when a more modern reading would probably require something more significant). Most of the characters also seem deeply unsympathetic, which makes it hard to care about them.

I suspect you might get more from this if you are deeply familiar with F. Scott Fitzgerald's life story, since, after reading up further, it is apparent that this is obviously meant to be semi-autobiographical.

“you're all so dull,” he said.
“But we're all there is!”

This book went on for way too long.

“...her eyes followed his figure until it become a dot and mingled with other dots in the summer crowd.”

Absolute classic. It has changed my entire perspective about human relationships, love and loneliness, in general. This being my first Fitzgerald book, I found it a bit tedious to read in the beginning. So much that I was about to quit reading it altogether (Now I am glad that I didn't). But as the book progresses, it turns out into a beautifully woven tragic and wistful love story. Usually, I'm not a fan of love stories but this book is just way out of league. I'm in awe and admiration with Fitzgerald's grandiose and royally elegant style of writing. He sure is a master of his words. The character development in this book is just top notch. The way Fitzgerald portrays the protagonist's fall from grace, throughout the novel, is just breath-taking. You end the book with a myriad of mixed emotions. I sort of felt bad for Dick Diver though. Looking at his indignity and his pitiable state at the end, it just strengthened my cynicism about the concept of love. The book is also full of amusing epigrams and aphorisms, which makes it profound at times. Overall, it's a thought provoking masterpiece by Fitzgerald. Will explore more of the genius of F. Scott Fitzgerald!

The further I get into the book, the more I like it. Of the 3 Fitzgerald titles I read recently, I like this the best.

So promising to begin with but somehow it went off the rails. When we go back in time to see the evolution of Dick‰ЫЄs and Nicole‰ЫЄs relationship, we are supposed to get to know them better, but we never really do. Dick, especially, seems simply to fade out. I would have been more interested in seeing what Rosemary was up to, honestly. Knowing a little bit about Fitzgerald‰ЫЄs very personal investment in this story, I can‰ЫЄt help making assumptions and jumping to conclusions about how the story came about and why it has the flaws it does, but I don‰ЫЄt think I‰ЫЄll go there. In the end this was such a personal book from one of the great writers and you take the bad with the good.

The characters aren't worth caring about. In many ways, I think that's part of why I found this novel so compelling. An early reviewer called them “trivial people”, which reportedly annoyed Fitzgerald: he must have recognized the truth of it. No matter. Those shallow, petty characters reflect much of what we hold dear in ourselves and Fitzgerald shows us ourselves, our lives, our hopes. Each of us thinks of ourself as a good person, wants to be a good person, but things happen. We find ourselves in places where we don't want to be, without knowing how we got there. Tender is the Night is such a story and it's rare to go five pages without an “Aha” moment, a clearly worded insight, a pause of recognition. Fitzgerald saw and understood much. Even better, he's able to write about it with compassion and, yes, tenderness. If I'm around in another ten years, remind me to pick this one up again. I'd like to see what I missed on this reading.

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.