I had forgotten how depressing F. Scott can be, and I think more than usual in this book. Talk about a tragic ending! ( )

Whenever F. Scott Fitzgerald is mentioned the first thing that comes to mind is "The Great Gatsby". Fitzgerald only published 5 full length novels and one of them was not released until after his untimely death at the age of 44. "Tender is the Night" was the last novel published while he was still living. At the time he was struggling with serious personal problems: alcohol abuse, financial debt, and his beautiful socialite wife Zelda was in and out of mental hospitals suffering from schizophrenia. The glamorous lifestyle F. Scott and Zelda lived during the 1920’s was falling apart, and so was their marriage. "Tender is the Night" mirrors the pain, confusion, frustration and dissatisfaction in F. Scott’s life.

Told in three parts "Tender is the Night" begins on the beach at the French Riviera, a playground for the idle rich during the late 1920’s. Part 1 is seen through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, a young beautiful American actress on vacation. Her first day on the beach she meets the perfect couple, Nicole and Dr. Dick Diver, charming hosts to an intimate group of friends. From the moment Rosemary meets the Divers she is attracted to Dick, and much to Nicole’s dismay he draws Rosemary into their clique. Rosemary is dewy fresh, lighthearted and enthusiastic. In contrast, Nicole is disciplined, refined, and socially reserved. An affair seems inevitable. Towards summer’s end, filled with self assurance and in total command, Dick says, “I want to throw a really bad party….where there is a brawl and seductions and people go home with their feelings hurt and women pass out…..” It is no surprise that Part 1 ends with drama, scandal, and disarray.

Part 2 drops back to 1917, and tells in-depth story of Nicole and Dick Diver’s romance and marriage. Highlighting particular events of the early years of the Diver’s relationship, the story weaves its way back to the present.

Many Fitzgerald fans were dissatisfied with the sequence of Part 1 and Part 2, but I found it ingenious. It allows the reader to initially see the Diver’s from an unbiased objective point of view as Rosemary saw them. As in "The Great Gatsby," Fitzgerald liked to reserve an element of surprise; as the reader eventually learned of Gatsby’s true character, they also experience the shock of finding out that Nicole and Dick are not the perfect couple. In the conclusive Part 3 Dick and Nicole’s relationship spirals out of control as the Divers struggle to find themselves and deal with their tumultuous lifestyle and troubled marriage. "Tender is the Night" does not quite live up to the standard of "The Great Gatsby", but it certainly has intriguing characters and a very powerful plot. ( )

We break ourselves against one another; shattering our spirits against the unyielding hardness, the unforgiving and jagged defenses which protect our loved ones’ spirits. It is a necessary and all too familiar part of life. Sometimes the collision chokes a relationship, killing it before it can grow, and other times, it nurtures a bond until it flowers and sustains life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life was filled with such collisions, most notably his marriage to Zelda. Zelda’s fragile and oft broken psyche and the strained love between her and Fitzgerald clearly inspired him to write [Tender is the Night]. The novel follows the Divers, Dick and Nicole. Dick, a psychiatrist, falls in love with a patient, Nicole and begins a life altering obsession to cure her. During one of Nicole’s interludes of sanity, the couple meets Rosemary, a self-obsessed, narcissistic teenage actress. She tempts Dick and they have a brief love affair. Dick’s betrayal forever alters his love of Nicole, as she becomes increasingly paranoid and distrustful and he wallows in guilt and weakness.

The book’s story is not particularly engaging, as these spoiled and selfish people seem to randomly careen around, bumping into each other. But on several occasions, Fitzgerald’s pain and anguish over his wife’s malady and their tenuous bond to each other bleed through the rest of the story and characters, quickening the novel. I can’t say I enjoyed reading [Tender as the Night], though it certainly seized me in the occasional moment of raw emotion and pain. Fitzgerald wasn’t always telling a good story but often transposed powerful feelings, ones which must have afflicted him, into the book. And most every page offers graceful, harmonic language. Often, I turned off the processes in my mind with sort through story and plot and character to simply absorb the rich, powerful prose.

Bottom Line: A classic for two reasons: the way Fitzgerald can string words together and the glimpse it offers into lives cursed by madness.

4 bones!!!! ( )

I have to say I was very disappointed with this book. After reading The Great Gatsby I was eager to read more of F. Scott Fitzgeralds work so I thought I would read the one that took him the longest to write. I could honestly tell that he struggled to write this book. He was all over the place and it didn't even seem like a story. It took me a much longer time to read this than I had anticipated, but I was determined to finish it. The only good thing about this book is it does let you know a little bit about his life with Zelda, but he should have just written an autobiography instead of changing a few things and try to pass it off as fiction. I will read all of his other books anyway, but I really don't think Tender is the Night was worth the time. ( )

Read this last month and found I kept postponing the moment I had to review it because I didn't know what to write about it. Let me start by saying that there are two editions of Tender Is the Night: the book was originally published as a narrative with a non-linear sequence of events, but an edition issued after Fitzgerald's death was restructured - based on the writer's own notes - so that the events are recounted in the order in which they happen. The one I read was the latter. I don't know whether it is because of this re-arranging of events in a chronological order that I found the first third-or-so of the book particularly tiresome. The plot wasn't going anywhere, the characters were not particularly engaging at best - downright dull at worst - and I was particularly annoyed with Fitzgerald's writing style. I felt that he kept hinting at some life-altering truth beneath his words but he just won't get it out in the open and be done with it. He kept tantalizing the reader: overanalyzing, it seemed, the surface of the matter when he could have gotten to its rotten core in no time.

Having decided I will not give up on the novel yet, I persevered until it started to grow on me. Not in the sense of some sort of love or emotional bond being born, but in the sense of a delicate, deeper sense of appreciation. Having finished the book and looking back on it...I never did get to love the Divers. But had I given up on it halfway through I would still think, for example, that Dick Diver is a boring stereotype. Now I know him to be none other than Dick Diver: ambitious psychiatrist, drunkard, troublemaker, self-obsessed, disturbed, pitiable, enviable, talented, kind, mean, manipulative, money-loving, selfless, caring, insightful - and a hundred other things at once. I know Nicole to be Nicole and Rosemary to be Rosemary. And I do feel I'm a slightly better person for having gotten to know them; for experiencing the complex relationships, the subtle characterizations, the conflicting feelings, the underlying melancholy of the book. I still don't love any of the characters; but wouldn't dream of saying they are dull. I still don't like Fitzgerald's writing style; but wouldn't dream of saying it is bad. I'm still not sure I like this book; but wouldn't dream of saying I wish I hadn't read it. ( )