How is one to feel about a protagonist who frequently displays signs of elitism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia, finds himself worryingly attracted to young girls, has no goal in life except to make himself useful to damsels in distress, and drinks away his career and marriage, ending up a mere shadow of his former self? Is one supposed to regard him as a tragic hero? Is one to sympathise with him? And if one does sympathise with him, is that because of the way he was written, or rather because

To me the title was the best part of the book.

I mean…it begins badly, tails off a bit in the middle, and the less said about the ending the better.Occasionally, there are books that leave you at a loss as to how to dismiss them. Reading this I kept thinking of a line from Stoppard's The Real Thing: ‘There’s something scary about stupidity made coherent. I can deal with idiots, and I can deal with sensible argument, but I don’t know how to deal with you.’ Tender is the Night is not stupid, but it is, if you like, triviality made coherent. Th...

When Fitzgerald finished this gem, he was stunned by the poor reviews it received. I honestly think it's a profoundly more true and powerful book than Gatsby ever will be. His effortless and viceral writing tells a story of such complex and accurate human relationships, I often find myself reflecting on Dick Diver as a friend I should check up on, and part of me thinks I spent a year of my youth hanging out on the French Riveria having too much to drink, but somehow pulling it off sophistication...

“I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there'll always be the person I am to-night.” If you were to meet Dick and Nicole Diver at a party, a restaurant, or on the beach, you would leave them feeling as if you had been in the presence of greatness. They are both witty, charming, gorgeous, majestic, sexy, and in command of whatever situation they find themselves in. They are the sun and moon merged together, and no one shines brighte...

(Book 638 from 1001 books) - Tender is the Night, F. Scott FitzgeraldTender Is the Night, is the fourth and final novel, completed by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was first published in Scribner's Magazine, between January and April 1934, in four issues. Dick and Nicole Diver are a glamorous couple, who take a villa, in the South of France, and surround themselves, with a circle of friends, mainly Americans. Also staying at the resort are Rosemary Hoyt, a young actress, and her mother...

Tender Is the Night is a flowery derision of the beautiful people’s world and a bitter tale of ruination.There are man and wife living in comfort and luxury…She is enigmatic and beautiful…She sat in the car, her lovely face set, controlled, her eyes brave and watchful, looking straight ahead toward nothing. Her dress was bright red and her brown legs were bare. She had thick, dark, gold hair like a chow’s.He is courageous and beautiful…Save among a few of the tough-minded and perennially suspici...

This book is so pointless, you could read the chapters in random order and probably not feel like you'd missed much. This marks my second and final attempt to read it. I almost made it to the halfway point this time. If you loved The Great Gatsby, don't get your hopes up for this one to be anything close to that good. You'll be disappointed.

We first meet Dick and Nicole Diver on the beach in the south of France. They are a golden couple, beautiful and rich. All those around them are slightly in awe, especially Rosemary Hoyt, a very young actress who immediately convinces herself she’s fallen in love with Dick. The Divers epitomise cool, they are self assured, well travelled and fashionable - they belong to a set of well off Americans who drift around Europe, sometimes with purpose, some times indolently. Rosemary is accepted into t...

I was besotted with Scott and Zelda in my youth. Along with Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield I read everything about them I could lay my hands on. And I loved this novel because of how much obvious autobiography it contained. And to some extent the measure of enjoyment you glean from Tender will depend on how heavily you are invested emotionally in Scott and Zelda's real-life story. Because, despite all the smokescreens, the ruse that Dick and Nicole are based on Gerald and Sarah Murphy, i...

SPOILERS "He wished she had no background, that she was just a girl lost with no address save the night from which she had come." Tender is the Night is a love story. It is also a story about loneliness. But mostly, it is about the need to love and belong. Dick Diver falls in love with mentally ill woman and marries her. But he never truly finds happiness with her. He falls in love with an young actress, but he never gets to be with her, because his connection with and his love for his sick wi...

This is my favorite Fitzgerald book. I read it back to back with This Side of Paradise last year, which was an interesting experiment. I had the young, beautiful, self-confident Fitzgerald and the Fitzgerald of post-Zelda's craziness, dark dark alcoholic Fitzgerald. Besides showing obviously how much his skills had improved, it showed the sheer range he was capable of as well. This is a dark, depressing novel. Loss, loneliness, isolation, desolation. It does not end well. But the sheer power of

Losing is a part of being a human, and sometimes the more you lose, the more vulnerable and tender you area kind of social and psychological story follows the life of Dick Diver and the nature of his marital relationship over years his life gradually was torn apart, he was lost between a trivial life, the psychological problems of his wife, faded career and an affair with a young actressfinding himself adrift in a world that is entirely purposelessbitter but beautiful written novel, Fitzgerald w...

Tender is the night, peaceful is the Rivera setting and fascinating is a novel that is scathing in its messaging as it mediates in heavy themes of infidelity, materialism, alcoholism, child abuse, mental illness, and vanity but most of all moral suppression in pursuit of pleasure.A novel that makes no apologies for shining a light on the moral shortcomings of society, the burden of class, wealth and expectation, and the power of love and lust that turns people blind, as the characters are forced...

i knew a dick once. his name was sam, and he was a star. people gravitated toward him everywhere he went. i did, too. he radiated light and fun and when he talked to you, he made you feel like the most important person in the room. he partied hard, and he was the type of person you wanted to party with, because it was always a good time. he was the son of a diplomat, knew five languages, and always knew exactly what to say or do to get the situation how he wanted it. when i was about sixteen, we...

Tender is Night or so they say. I say tender is a woman's psyche, and the man's ego that tries to make it strong. Too bad both of them suffer from a severe case of asshatitis. "Tender is the Night" is the story of Dick Diver and his Wife Nicole. You don't actually find this out until a fourth of the way into the book. At first we meet the happy couple through the eyes of Rosemary, a young actress from America with a Norman Bates styled affinity for "Mother." She quickly latches onto Mr. Diver, h...

1.5/5 stars. This book was a hot mess and such a disappointment compared to "The Great Gatsby" which is a favourite of mine. Right from the beginning, I had no idea where this dishevelled story was going, and having now finished it I'm still not sure what the overall point of it was. Sure, "Tender Is the Night" comes with some beautiful passages and observations on life and people, but it also comes with a bunch of contradicting themes and destinies that all go in different directions. I get tha...

For the longest time I lived an F. Scott Fitzgerald free existence. The name was familiar enough although I mostly associated it with those bulky Penguin Classics which are prone to making me break out in a cold-sweat. Weighty tomes burdened by commentary on class difference, forbidden or tormented or doomed romance, some of which are drier than a mouthful of Jacob's Crackers. I am F. Scott Fitzgerald-free no longer! And how glad does this make me? Very. I read The Great Gatsby a couple of month...

This is a hard but necessary book to read. It should be the type of plot we're attracted to, because it's a dissolution story, not unlike LOST WEEKEND or LEAVING LAS VEGAS, to name but two examples of the genre. And yet many friends I share this with just can't get into it. Part of the blame lies with the style: it's just so damned intricate and thick, it tends to scare away those who don't want to be ravished by style. As someone who does, I can get lost in this book any day of the week. I rere...

“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.''