The novels and short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald seem to vary much in quality. I also wonder whether different readers favour different works. For instance, I loved The beautiful and the damned and This side of paradise, but I hated most short stories, and The last tycoon. Unfortanately, Tender is the night joins the works that I dislike.

While superficially the novel seems to be well-written, no story emerges in my mind. I cannot follow the story from page to page, nor from chapter to chapter, and the structure of the book remains a mystery to me. I couldn't even tell what the book is about. ( )

After rereading Gatsby for the umpteenth time, I have to say that it is superior to _Tender Is the Night_, if only because it comes as close as any novel I have read to being the "Great American Novel". _Tender_ is more autobiographical, and for this reason the reader can get lost in the particulars, focusing more on the details of time and place while losing the thematic big picutre. ( )

Dick y Nicole Diver, una pareja norteamericana, llega a la Riviera francesa en los años en que allí se citaba la beautiful people de todo el mundo. Son ricos, inteligentes, elegantes irresistiblemente atractivos. Pero hay algo que no es perfecto. Nicole tiene un secreto, Dick una debilidad, y juntos se dirigen irremediablemente hacia las rocas contra las que su aventura puede estrellarse.

Maru

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 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. ( )