Goodreads | Tender is the Night

Kirstie rated it:

(review of isbn 068480154X)

07/02/08

Read in July, 2008

recommended to Kirstie by: no one...I just didn't want to read the book of his that everyon
recommends it for: people interested in 1920s-30s time period, Americans abroad, classic authors

It took a long time for me to actually get through Tender is the Night...it ended up not being such a dreadful read as I thought it would be from the first section, which is mainly frivolity with rather derogatory remarks about the females in the book wanting to have a man to tell them how to feel, think, and even one in which a woman following a man (her husband) around and losing her own identity is referred to as a trophy.

I've been told by someone dear to me that this is just time per...more It took a long time for me to actually get through Tender is the Night...it ended up not being such a dreadful read as I thought it would be from the first section, which is mainly frivolity with rather derogatory remarks about the females in the book wanting to have a man to tell them how to feel, think, and even one in which a woman following a man (her husband) around and losing her own identity is referred to as a trophy.

I've been told by someone dear to me that this is just time period, etc. However, my main feeling is just that good authors rise above that and there were plenty of strong female authors that had been around by that time that for sure demonstrated the ability to think on their own...let's see...Virgina Woolf, Mary Shelley, and of course the Brontë sisters. I digress but you get the idea how incensed I was, right? I wanted to tear apart the book from cover to cover. To make it worse, the main character also makes quite a few racial remarks that are again perhaps passed off as "sign of the times" but still got under my skin quite a bit.

That said, the other thing that really stinks about the first part is how nauseatingly formulaic it is. The plot is incredibly predictable...naive young actress from Hollywood travels to France, wants to learn the ways of love through an older man (male protagonist) who happens to also be married. It literally sickened me to read in pretty much every way imaginable. For the most part, the beginning section is drivel.

Where the book grows interesting is towards the middle and end as it speaks more about aging and losing all of your charms and friends...of the mental insanity of one of the female characters and, in some ways, even a process of giving up and losing control. Then, losing life's meaning and drifting away into a nothingness. It's the opposite of frivolity and if were rated alone, would be given a 4/5 (the first section more like a 2/5 stars) No, this later part may be incredibly depressing but it seems to have relevance that carries weight in a timeless sense that almost makes the initial suffering worthwhile.

Oh and as a side note, though this is only a minor spoiler...it was a very strange read for me coming from upstate NY...the male protagonist is from Buffalo, NY originally and refers to this a few times...at the end, he actually ends up in the town where I was born: Hornell, NY which has a population of about 15 people, including the fictional character....less

Like this review? yes

1 comments

John rated it:

(review of isbn 068480154X)

05/02/08

Read in May, 2008

Fitzgerald's quasi-autobiographical take at the struggles of his creative soul. Tender contains Fitzgerald at perhaps his most lyrical, like a gentle pastoral on canvas. Consider:

"She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself for so little, for the beat of a response, the assurance of a complimentary vibration in him. Minute by minute the sweetness drained down into her out of the willow trees, out of the dark world." ...more Fitzgerald's quasi-autobiographical take at the struggles of his creative soul. Tender contains Fitzgerald at perhaps his most lyrical, like a gentle pastoral on canvas. Consider:

"She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself for so little, for the beat of a response, the assurance of a complimentary vibration in him. Minute by minute the sweetness drained down into her out of the willow trees, out of the dark world."

The novel's pace is slow in the sense that it progresses chiefly as character studies. It isn't a perfect book and may not be the most interesting, but the prose keeps it from going dull. Book one features the young and seemingly innocent Rosemary Hoyt as the primary protagonist. Book two is mainly seen through Dick Diver's experiences -- the novel's hero. And book three, in the end (but not at the very end), belongs to Nicole.

To summarize quickly, the novel is about a seemingly perfect ex-pat American couple meeting a young vacationing actress, and how throughout the years love erodes this perfect image. All three characters are revealed differently and disparagingly page by page, progressing, regressing, or stagnating by the end.

I had the sense that Fitzgerald was trying to justify his inability to achieve literary success due to his own wife's illness, and that he sacrificed his literary career for her betterment (though he couldn't ignore his own guilt of neglecting her):

"As an indifference cherished, or left to atrophy, becomes an emptiness, to this extent he had learned to become empty of Nicole, serving her against his will with negations and emotional neglect. 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."

But Fitzgerald is no Dick Diver (at least, when sober), and his sacrifices do not merit martyrdom. After all, Zelda burned to death in a mental hospital....less

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

1 comments

Jonathan rated it:

(review of isbn 068480154X)

07/29/08

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: people who don't do anything without first consulting Mother.

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 l...more 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, his charms no match for her ignorance and youth. They all hang out together, doing rich people things like eating, and hanging out at the beach, and hating minorities (It is the 20's after all), and all other sorts of things that make you want to slash the tires on their Rolls.

Book two abandons Rosemary and we focus on Dick Diver, Psychiatrist at Large. He doesn't actually do much psycho analyzing, but spends most of his time wondering why he married Nicole in the first place and developing a drinking problem. Turns out Nicole is cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and Dick married her with some God complex of trying to save her. But all he ends up doing is ruining himself.

Book three continues the downfall, kind of told through Nicole's eyes. Dick falls further and further down the rabbit hole while Nicole seems to see daylight in the fog of her crazy. She ends up pulling a Dick (Diver. Head out of the gutter people) but with the opposite reaction of what it did to him. I think.

This book isn't necessarily long, though it feels like it. Long passages of time pass in one paragraph, making it confusing and a rather dull read. None of the characters are likable, and I think you end up just wishing all of them went the way of Abe North. Speaking of, what the heck DID happen to Abe North. That story line was never really resolved.

They say it took him forever to write this and it kind of feels like it. It doesn't connect very well and you wonder how much is Fitz's desperate cry for help from his own life full of money and ruin. Can anyone tell me why I am supposed to love Fitzgerald so much?...less

Like this review? yes

title link
avg rating
small image
med image
large image

Tender is the Night

discuss this book

groups with this book

friend reviews (0)

lists with this book

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 6094)

book data (includes all editions)

blog this book

popular shelves