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tylermcgaughey's review against another edition
4.0
The plot and characters are pure soap opera, but Fitzgerald cranks up the emotions to almost feverish levels and ends up with a novel that proceeds with the inevitability of Greek tragedy.
jawinter's review against another edition
4.0
It has been years since I read this and am so glad I decided to revisit it. Fitzgerald's craft is on every page with every evocative description, great use of an outsider looking in at a rarefied world and, of course, the tragic story of a man's slow and inevitable downfall.
njnk_59's review against another edition
5.0
For some reason, this is my favorite of his work. Rereading it now shows the glaring style differences between when he wrote it, the first time I read it, and now.
But oh how he turns a phrase!
But oh how he turns a phrase!
jodijay333's review against another edition
4.0
It took me a long time to get into this book, but once I got past the first part and realized that it wasn't really about Rosemary, it became much more interesting.
rosethetortoise's review against another edition
3.0
i think this is my fave scott fitzgerald... so raw and emotional.
chrissych's review against another edition
5.0
I've been sitting on this review for a while now, trying to determine what I could actually say about it that would get at my varied feelings about it without seeming morose, pessimistic, or otherwise lugubrious. But the fact is: Tender is the Night is, at its core, an incredibly depressing novel, and reaches unfathomable depths of beauty in its sad, quiet honesty. I think I've come to terms with the fact that I'm delighting in tragedy borne of the very real disappointments in the lives of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, from which some facets of the novel are plainly derived. This is a painfully gorgeous and melancholy tale of slow demise and the natural erosion of love, wrapped in the splendid trappings of Fitzgerald's careful prose.
The story opens, rather unconventionally, at the peak of the protagonists' lives: a care-free summer on the French Riveria circa 1925, where a young American actress, Rosemary Hoyt, meets an expatriate couple, Dick and Nicole Diver, and falls in love. The point of view shifts slowly from Rosemary's childlike wonder to the building cynicism of Dick, who becomes the central protagonist and whose mystery-- a fabrication of Rosemary's youthful delusion-- is disassembled piece by piece. Dick and Nicole's history is chronicled in a piecemeal and fairly nonlinear unfolding of darkness and earnest efforts to overcome it, from the apex of their love to its eventual dissolution amid a lifetime of jealousies, quiet betrayals, and mental ghosts. The characterization of Nicole is modelled heavily on Zelda Fitzgerald, so a biographically savvy reader will have some idea of what to expect. The plot is a slow downward march, with its own peaks and valleys of course, from naive love and youthful confidence to a more crudely honest perspective and a jaded pessimism. It's depressing as heck to read, but Fitzgerald paints even the darkest moments in the most haunting of expressions, capturing the strange sad loveliness of failure and time and sickness.
Having been the other half to a mind afflicted by (much less serious but nevertheless impacting) mental illness, parts of the book were devastatingly real, to the extent that I'd have to take emotional breaks from reading it. Although I was captivated by the slow-motion train wreck before me, at times it read far too much like a mirror for comfort. But I think this is one of the qualities I enjoyed so immensely about the novel: it's inherently uncomfortable, fragments of broken private (real) lives laid bare in living poetry, daring the reader to look away. We know we should avert our gazes, but we can't. Fitzgerald captures that self-aware sense of unease in every chilling metaphor, every calculated collection of syllables, every snippet of dialogue giving us an untainted view of such lives, knowing that we won't look away until the last stitch of those lives has been undone.
It was stunning literature, very carefully crafted, and I'd recommend it to anyone who needs to feel.
The story opens, rather unconventionally, at the peak of the protagonists' lives: a care-free summer on the French Riveria circa 1925, where a young American actress, Rosemary Hoyt, meets an expatriate couple, Dick and Nicole Diver, and falls in love. The point of view shifts slowly from Rosemary's childlike wonder to the building cynicism of Dick, who becomes the central protagonist and whose mystery-- a fabrication of Rosemary's youthful delusion-- is disassembled piece by piece. Dick and Nicole's history is chronicled in a piecemeal and fairly nonlinear unfolding of darkness and earnest efforts to overcome it, from the apex of their love to its eventual dissolution amid a lifetime of jealousies, quiet betrayals, and mental ghosts. The characterization of Nicole is modelled heavily on Zelda Fitzgerald, so a biographically savvy reader will have some idea of what to expect. The plot is a slow downward march, with its own peaks and valleys of course, from naive love and youthful confidence to a more crudely honest perspective and a jaded pessimism. It's depressing as heck to read, but Fitzgerald paints even the darkest moments in the most haunting of expressions, capturing the strange sad loveliness of failure and time and sickness.
Having been the other half to a mind afflicted by (much less serious but nevertheless impacting) mental illness, parts of the book were devastatingly real, to the extent that I'd have to take emotional breaks from reading it. Although I was captivated by the slow-motion train wreck before me, at times it read far too much like a mirror for comfort. But I think this is one of the qualities I enjoyed so immensely about the novel: it's inherently uncomfortable, fragments of broken private (real) lives laid bare in living poetry, daring the reader to look away. We know we should avert our gazes, but we can't. Fitzgerald captures that self-aware sense of unease in every chilling metaphor, every calculated collection of syllables, every snippet of dialogue giving us an untainted view of such lives, knowing that we won't look away until the last stitch of those lives has been undone.
It was stunning literature, very carefully crafted, and I'd recommend it to anyone who needs to feel.
thebeautyofliterature's review against another edition
5.0
When I was in high school, I read The Great Gatsby and fell deeply and madly in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald - in a way that, looking back, resembles very much the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby. I barely knew anything about Fitzgerald, but I knew he was one of the greatest authors alive and that I would always love his stories. Now, I'm an adult embarking on reading Tender Is the Night and I'm quickly discovering that loving F. Scott Fitzgerald's work is not that easy. Tender Is the Night is a job to read, one that eventually is very rewarding, but can be off putting at first.
Not only is it a job to read, it was a decade of work to write. Tender Is the Night is famously the follow up novel of The Great Gatsby that took Fitzgerald nine years to get exactly right. And you can tell - the plot is so intricate and the writing so typically decadent Fitzgerald while also not having an useless word in there. Some novels read like they were the easiest thing to write, this one reads like a lot of love and heartache went into it.
At the core, it's the story of the marriage between Dick and Nicole Diver. In the original version of the book, we meet the couple after they're married for a few years and are in the South of France vacationing with their friends when they meet Rosemary. Rosemary shows them some ugly truths about their marriage and Fitzgerald then takes you back in time to discover how Dick and Nicole fell in love in the first place. This is not the only version in existence; later on, mostly due to the lukewarm reception of the book that dealt with issues that post-depression America wasn't interested in, Fitzgerald changed around the chapters so that the reader chronologically reads from the Diver's first meeting to Rosemary's role to eventually the end of the story. (This process, including the many versions Fitzgerald wrote before the book was even released, is chronicled in The Composition of Tender Is the Night by Matthew Bruccoli, which is an academic, but fascinating read)
I've read the original version, as I feel this best represents what Fitzgerald wanted before he got influenced by other people's opinions, but I can understand why he changed it around later. The beginning of the novel is hard. As in usual Fitzgerald fashion, we are thrown right into the action with no explanation of who anyone is or what exactly they are doing. The novel is a roller coaster and quite honestly exhausting to read. I gave up, left the book for weeks, and came back and realised that is the beauty of the book. The lives of the characters are a roller coaster and exhausting. They're all miserable, tired, unhappy,... And somehow through the writing, Fitzgerald makes you feel the same way. Their lives are crazy and there's no way anyone can constantly live, or read, like that - you feel the dooming decay on these characters more and more with each page.
And then book two starts and we find out how Dick and Nicole met. And it's calm, beautiful reading that reminds us that those characters once had an easier and happier life. This is where Fitzgerald shines and really introduces you to the most beautiful sentences in literature. That's exactly what modern reviewers have discovered after Fitzgerald's death, Tender Is the Night is not as accessible as The Great Gatsby, but once you break through, it's also more beautiful. The story of a couple having and losing love is heartbreaking and Fitzgerald masters the language as no one else to tell this story.
Would I recommend this book as a beach read? Never. I think the first half really requires your completely focus and thought and being in an empty house in a cosy chair sounds much more suitable for this story, especially since the second half doesn't require your completely focus, but you won't be able to stop giving it your all. It's beautiful and all I wish for anyone is to have the time to really explore this novel and fall more deeply in love with Fitzgerald - even with his more complicated layers.
Not only is it a job to read, it was a decade of work to write. Tender Is the Night is famously the follow up novel of The Great Gatsby that took Fitzgerald nine years to get exactly right. And you can tell - the plot is so intricate and the writing so typically decadent Fitzgerald while also not having an useless word in there. Some novels read like they were the easiest thing to write, this one reads like a lot of love and heartache went into it.
At the core, it's the story of the marriage between Dick and Nicole Diver. In the original version of the book, we meet the couple after they're married for a few years and are in the South of France vacationing with their friends when they meet Rosemary. Rosemary shows them some ugly truths about their marriage and Fitzgerald then takes you back in time to discover how Dick and Nicole fell in love in the first place. This is not the only version in existence; later on, mostly due to the lukewarm reception of the book that dealt with issues that post-depression America wasn't interested in, Fitzgerald changed around the chapters so that the reader chronologically reads from the Diver's first meeting to Rosemary's role to eventually the end of the story. (This process, including the many versions Fitzgerald wrote before the book was even released, is chronicled in The Composition of Tender Is the Night by Matthew Bruccoli, which is an academic, but fascinating read)
I've read the original version, as I feel this best represents what Fitzgerald wanted before he got influenced by other people's opinions, but I can understand why he changed it around later. The beginning of the novel is hard. As in usual Fitzgerald fashion, we are thrown right into the action with no explanation of who anyone is or what exactly they are doing. The novel is a roller coaster and quite honestly exhausting to read. I gave up, left the book for weeks, and came back and realised that is the beauty of the book. The lives of the characters are a roller coaster and exhausting. They're all miserable, tired, unhappy,... And somehow through the writing, Fitzgerald makes you feel the same way. Their lives are crazy and there's no way anyone can constantly live, or read, like that - you feel the dooming decay on these characters more and more with each page.
And then book two starts and we find out how Dick and Nicole met. And it's calm, beautiful reading that reminds us that those characters once had an easier and happier life. This is where Fitzgerald shines and really introduces you to the most beautiful sentences in literature. That's exactly what modern reviewers have discovered after Fitzgerald's death, Tender Is the Night is not as accessible as The Great Gatsby, but once you break through, it's also more beautiful. The story of a couple having and losing love is heartbreaking and Fitzgerald masters the language as no one else to tell this story.
Would I recommend this book as a beach read? Never. I think the first half really requires your completely focus and thought and being in an empty house in a cosy chair sounds much more suitable for this story, especially since the second half doesn't require your completely focus, but you won't be able to stop giving it your all. It's beautiful and all I wish for anyone is to have the time to really explore this novel and fall more deeply in love with Fitzgerald - even with his more complicated layers.
stellarkruize's review against another edition
2.0
Such a boring and unrelatable story! Sorry for those of you that love this one and I read it based on those people that call this his "hidden gem." I give it two stars because a lot of the descriptions were beautifully written, but also that they just ran on and on and on! This 300+ page book felt like 800+! The only person I found somewhat interesting was Rosemary and I empathized with Nicole, but the lot of them were just wealthy, horrible people. Horrible to each other too and they seemed to not really know what to do with their lives. It was very anticlimactic and just...boring. I had to muscle through this one simply because I wanted to finish what I started. Like I said though, beautifully written, but it just drags on and has unrelatable characters.
__lb__'s review against another edition
4.0
I’ve been having a hard time focusing on reading as of late, but I was finally able to finish one of the three books I’m currently working on. A wonderful story about the slow decay of love, of balancing life, and wonderful commentary on how the world viewed its society 100 years ago. A bit slow, definitely some views that wouldn’t fly today, but overall a great read with a realistic ending.