Tender Is the Night (original 1934; edition 1995)

Brilliant book about the Divers, psychiatrist Dick and wife Nicole, and their lives, a portrait of marriage but with wonderful characterizations. ( )

This semi-autobiographical novel centres around a very wealthy couple, Dick and Nicole Diver, making their base in the French Riviera as they live a life of leisure in the years after the first world war. The first section of the novel is in some ways muted, with a group of not particularly likeable characters and an 18 year old actress, Rosemary, falling for and trying to seduce Dick. The main drama, though, revolves around what is hidden - a mysterious scene with Nicole in the bathroom, which is gossiped and defended so energetically that it even provokes a real, though ultimately harmless, duel.

In later sections, though, which largely take place before the first section, the main story builds, and the pieces of the puzzle are put together. It turns out that Nicole's father had had sex with her when she was 12, and at 16 she is suffering from schizophrenia, and admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland, where she first meets Dick, an ambitious doctor, who writes successful textbooks. He initially is lukewarm in response to her attentions, but either because of a desire to save her, or because of her beauty, or huge wealth, or maybe truly because of love, eventually accepts her need for him and marries her. But the strain of propping up someone so mentally ill takes a strain on him (or is it just an excuse?) and his productivity wanes as his alcoholism takes over. He eventually does have an affair with Rosemary, 4 years after meeting her, but it isn't particularly satisfactory, and he feels increasingly in decline.

Eventually, the marriage does fall apart, almost by default, when Nicole has an affair with someone else. But while she feels increasingly strong, healthy, independent, Dick is increasingly broken and unable to function.

The novel, definitely towards the start, and on the surface, appears a little trivial and superficial, but its ideas and characters linger in the mind, and its great strength is the ambiguity of the main characters, especially of their motives and choices, and the fascinating change in fortunes between Dick and Nicole. The structure is very clever, starting at the fulcrum of the entire novel conceptually. And some of the little descriptions are exciting and so original, as are the ideas. You can't help concluding that there is a great disturbing, haunting reality to Dick and Nicole by the end. ( )

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. ( )

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night is strategically broken up into 3 sections. Each section lends itself to a different perspective of the story, and each one made me re-evaluate my character adoration levels. I didn't rank it as high as Gatsby, because, well...it's not Gatsby, but I did enjoy it overall.

Summary:
We start out with Book One, and are introduced to Rosemary, the American acress, who meets up with Dick Diver and his wife Nicole. At this point in the story, I am in love. In my mind, Dick Diver and Jay Gatsby are one in the same - surrounded by parties, surrounded by meaningless people with lots of giggling, and lots of drinking going on. It appears to be a happy time, and you are instantly drawn into the lightheartedness that obviously exists on the French Riviera. Rosemary is, of course, enamored with Dick, and even comes to love Nicole. Good times.

Book Two, however, takes on a different side altogether, where we learn the backstory of the Divers. Turns out that Dick is actually a psychoanalyst and that his patient is Nicole. This part makes no sense to me. Guys aren't typically into this much drama, and it's almost as if he's talking himself into this pairing. I know he says that he loves her, but I never did get the really strong feeling that he did. This section really started me thinking that perhaps Dick wasn't all that strong of a person to start with.

Book Three takes us through Dick's fall - he starts drinking more, becoming more and more disrespectful to his friends, and has much more of a disregard for anyone and anything around him. Nicole, on the other hand, is becoming stronger. It's almost as if they have one supply of energy and if one is strong, the other is weak. It just feels like the energy has now shifted and Nicole is coming out on top. At the end, it's all about Nicole, and Dick just sort of fades away.

This is only the second Fitzgerald book I have read, and yet, it's obviously by him. His style is very bouncy. While the sentences themselves are easy to read, you fly along (as if at a party) enjoying the cadence of it all, to realize that he has shifted gears and you have no idea what has just happened. I found myself rereading on several occasions as a result so that I could try to grasp the storyline.

There is also a personal connection to this story - apparently, Fitzgerald's wife was schitzophrenic, and he is also claimed to have had an affair with a Hollywood actress. Thus, while this is a work of fiction, I'm sure for the author, it was much more than that, and may have accounted for the darker elements of the story often overtaking the lighter parts.
( )

It took a long time for me to actually get through Tender is the Night...it ended up not being such a dreadful read as I thought it would be from the first section, which is mainly frivolity with rather derogatory remarks about the females in the book wanting to have a man to tell them how to feel, think, and even one in which a woman following a man (her husband) around and losing her own identity is referred to as a trophy.


I've been told by someone dear to me that this is just time period, etc. However, my main feeling is just that good authors rise above that and there were plenty of strong female authors that had been around by that time that for sure demonstrated the ability to think on their own...let's see...Virgina Woolf, Mary Shelley, and of course the Brontë sisters. I digress but you get the idea how incensed I was, right? I wanted to tear apart the book from cover to cover. To make it worse, the main character also makes quite a few racial remarks that are again perhaps passed off as "sign of the times" but still got under my skin quite a bit.


That said, the other thing that really stinks about the first part is how nauseatingly formulaic it is. The plot is incredibly predictable...naive young actress from Hollywood travels to France, wants to learn the ways of love through an older man (male protagonist) who happens to also be married. It literally sickened me to read in pretty much every way imaginable. For the most part, the beginning section is drivel.


Where the book grows interesting is towards the middle and end as it speaks more about aging and losing all of your charms and friends...of the mental insanity of one of the female characters and, in some ways, even a process of giving up and losing control. Then, losing life's meaning and drifting away into a nothingness. It's the opposite of frivolity and if were rated alone, would be given a 4/5 (the first section more like a 2/5 stars) No, this later part may be incredibly depressing but it seems to have relevance that carries weight in a timeless sense that almost makes the initial suffering worthwhile.


Oh and as a side note, though this is only a minor spoiler...it was a very strange read for me coming from upstate NY...the male protagonist is from Buffalo, NY originally and refers to this a few times...at the end, he actually ends up in the town where I was born: Hornell, NY which has a population of about 15 people, including the fictional character. ( )