Tender Is the Night

This is a mess of a book. A beautiful mess, but still a mess.
We’re dropped into the middle of things as Dick and Nicole Driver are living in the Riviera, hosting and entertaining a motley group of friends through a mostly rich and idle summer.
Dick is a successful psychiatrist, and Nicole is a celebrated wealthy beauty who is devotedly in love with him. The lesser planets orbiting these two stars are just that: lesser beings who are shepherded by the Drivers. All seems frothy, light, exciting, and perhaps a bit too rich for a steady diet.
Enter Rosemary, a starlet from America, who turns Dick’s head and is the catalyst for the really messy parts of the story. We have a hint or two that something’s quite wrong, apart from show more Rosemary.
In part two we learn that Nicole has schizophrenia, and Dick is her doctor as well as her husband. The strains of this relationship bring about Dick’s eventual...collapse.
Fitzgerald is fascinated by the rich; he somehow thought they were different from us ordinary folks. But in this book he can’t conceal that their values and lives are shallow and based on the merest ephemera.
What makes the book a mess, I think, is that Fitzgerald seems to be trying to write two quite different narratives as one. It’s clear that Dick and Nicole start out as modeled on Gerald and Sarah Murphy, a wealthy couple who lived on the Riviera for years in much the same way as the Divers of Part One. But in Part Two, the couple morphs into imaginary portraits of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. That transition isn’t well-handled (to be fair, I don’t think it could be done well), and the book falters badly because of it.
Fitzgerald’s portrayal of his own disastrous, sloppy slide into alcoholism is brilliantly done, however, and redeemed the book for me.
There’s some beautiful writing here, a lot of it. That made up for some of the weaknesses.
Just as an aside, until I read this I had no idea of the depth and breadth of of Fitzgerald’s fear, disdain, and hatred toward women. He loved them, but they made him miserable; that misery is very much present in this book.
Well worth reading, even if just for the writing and the perfect picture of what would become the Jet Setters in the late 1920’s. show less

F. Scott Fitzgerald's devotion to his wife, Zelda, is well-documented, as is her mental breakdown. Any story that capitalizes on this love and personal experience, given Fitzgerald's skill with a pen, is bound to be powerful. Such is the case with Tender Is the Night, long touted as the most autobiographical of all of his novels.

One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is the various points of view in which Fitzgerald chooses to expose the story. While this means that the narrative does not flow chronologically, the reader is allowed to see the story unfold through every major character's eyes. Each change in narrator forces a reader to reconsider previous understanding of the characters and to rethink everything that has been show more brought to light to that point. While it can be confusing at times, in the end the story is much more realistic and consequently more powerful than it would have been had the story followed in chronological order.

Dick and Nicole's life among the fabulously wealthy expatriates living along the French Riviera is so fantastic and difficult to conceive for the layperson. Through Rosemary's eyes, the reader gets the sense of being included among the in-crowd after so long watching from afar. Rosemary's naivety at the mendacity of the problems Dick and Nicole face is unsurprising and slightly amusing. However, this does not prevent the reader from being completely shocked and disturbed once Dick starts sharing his story and the truth about Nicole's breakdown comes to light. Their story is definite proof that all the money in the world cannot buy health and happiness.

Tender Is the Night is a frightfully honest portrayal of mental illness and its impact on relationships. Fitzgerald's personal anguish over his wife's experiences seeps through every page of this beautiful and poignant story. With his mastery of writing and his personal interest in the story itself, it is no wonder that Tender Is the Night is considered one of his masterpieces. show less

As I progressed through Tender is the Night, I found myself repeatedly asking, “Why?” Why was this story told in such a style? Why the excessive verbosity? Why the overwhelming focus on dialogue, often interrupted by long, detailed descriptions of people and things that seemed entirely irrelevant to the plot? In particular, I found the depictions of random strangers, doors, fences, and balustrades especially distracting, given that none of these elements played any meaningful role in the story.

Throughout the novel, I struggled to connect with the characters, who seemed distant, unlikable, and difficult to relate to on any level. The writing itself did little to help. The lack of emotional engagement with the characters left me show more indifferent to the unfolding drama. I couldn’t care less about their struggles, desires, or even their inevitable downfalls. In fact, I often found myself disengaged and wishing for a tighter, more focused storyline.

This feeling of dissatisfaction isn't new to me; I had a similar experience with Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Both novels share a portrayal of wealthy, privileged characters whose lives revolve around excess, superficiality, and self-absorption. While this may resonate with some readers, I’ve come to realize that Fitzgerald’s world—one of shallow decadence and moral decay—simply doesn’t appeal to me. The characters' struggles felt hollow, their motives inscrutable, and their world one I had no desire to inhabit.

In conclusion, Tender is the Night confirmed that Fitzgerald’s depictions of spoiled, entitled, and morally bankrupt characters are not stories I wish to revisit. While I can appreciate the historical and literary importance of his work, I find that his portrayal of the elite and their turmoil simply doesn’t resonate with me. After both The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night, I think it’s safe to say I am finished with Fitzgerald’s particular brand of storytelling. show less

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 underpinning 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 show more 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. show less

Fitzgerald's tale of rich Americans in Europe between the two world wars is also a tale of Dick Diver, a psychiatrist in the early years of the profession, perhaps too weak to refuse temptation, or too eager to be 'good' to protect himself and others from their obsessions. The writing itself can be exquisite, and the story loops back and forth between the central present and the events that make it what it is. There's a lot of Fitzgerald and Zelda in this, but it's not actually their story. Money, alcohol, the recent destruction, all weigh on these sometimes beautiful people.

An alcoholic’s tale. The main character is simultaneously self-absorbed and self-loathing. Like Dick Diver, Fitzgerald apparently loses interest in the two main female characters once they pass the age of eighteen. As for the Diver himself, Fitzgerald seems ultimately to be telling us “Don’t feel sorry for him, he’s not worth it.” Moments of brilliance, but overall a sad, unsettling work.

I admit, I may have approached this book with a certain apprehension. After my unpleasant experience with D H Lawrence, and also being a self-proclaimed critic of the Modernists in general (even you, Virginia Woolf, even you), I wasn’t too keen on starting this one. Truth is, I really should have been.

Tender is the Night is, at first, a little creepy, if you’re familiar with Fitzgerald and his married life. His wife, Zelda, was schizophrenic, and made his life a living hell. The poor guy did the only thing he knew he could do and wrote about it to deal with the stress, immortalizing her as the turbulent, mad Nicole Diver. All well and good there, kind of creepily autobiographical, but it’s fine.

But then there’s an extra layer of show more creepy because holy shit wait her husband used to be her therapist??????

Isn’t this why we have ethical laws?!

The premise of the story is simple enough: Dick Diver, married to Nicole, is in an unhappy marriage with a woman who is incredibly mentally ill. Dick, who seems to have a serious thing for younger women, has an affair with a film star who’s only just turned eighteen. The rest of the story is the deterioration of both Dick and his marriage, as Nicole somehow seems to come out of the whole thing stronger. As one of my old literature professors used to say, Dick is a diver, he goes down, while Nicole goes up. She’s like a parasite, taking all his happiness from him to fuel her own life.

The novel is easy to read and follow, a stark difference from Women in Love, which you will all remember I actually despised. The characters might not be incredibly likable, but they’re very real characters with very real worries. I loved reading this, immersing myself into the world of 1920s psychology and the upper class worries of the time. By the end of the book, I was almost sad to see the characters go, which speaks volumes about the way Fitzgerald can write a believable and likable cast of characters.

Kudos there, mate.

Final rating: 4/5. Any literature nerd has to read this. show less