Tender Is the Night in Around the World in 80 Books

Jan 26, 2013 Sera rated it liked it

Shelves: literary-fiction, audio, library, 1001-books

I read The Beautiful and Damned last winter and loved it. TITN was good, but not nearly as good as TBAD. In both, Fitzgerald's writing is excellent. His ability to provide descriptions of people and to give insight into their feelings and thoughts is amazing. Listening to his books on audio provides a unique listening experience because the vividness of Fitz's writing allows the reader to "see" much of to which she is listening.

The book is very dark, and like TBAD, at its core, it is about the u I read The Beautiful and Damned last winter and loved it. TITN was good, but not nearly as good as TBAD. In both, Fitzgerald's writing is excellent. His ability to provide descriptions of people and to give insight into their feelings and thoughts is amazing. Listening to his books on audio provides a unique listening experience because the vividness of Fitz's writing allows the reader to "see" much of to which she is listening.

The book is very dark, and like TBAD, at its core, it is about the unraveling of a marriage, which is not really a pleasant topic in its own right. However, what makes the topic work not as well as it did with TBAD is the set-up of the marriage here. Without giving anything away, how the Divers get together is a strange set of circumstances that starts off the overall story in an odd manner, that in my opinion, the story doesn't really recover from until much, much later in the book. In addition, I was surprised that (view spoiler), but then as the story goes on, Fitz fails to dwelve into this point, which left me scratching my head then as to its real relevance, except to extent that it is addressed early on in the book. Similarly, Fitz never addresses (view spoiler), which left another gap in the story to me.

Alcoholism is an important theme in the book, and I am learning as I work through Fitz's body work, that alcoholism is a recurring theme throughout his books, and Fitz continues to do an excellent job of showing the destructive nature of alcohol abuse. Interestingly, however, later in the book Dick Diver has a discussion with his friend Mary North about the difference between his drunkeness and those of his friend, Abe North. Mary tells Dick that Abe was a nice drunk whereas Dick was a mean one. Yet I felt that Fitz's point was - does it really matter? A drunk is a drunk, but an interesting discussion nonetheless.

Overall, I would recommend this book. My understanding from my GR friend, Aylin, is that the Divers are based upon Fitz's friends, Gerald and Sara Murphy. Some books about the couple are: Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story, Sara & Gerald: Villa America and After and Living Well Is the Best Revenge for those who are interested in learning more about these two members of the lost generation. Thanks, Aylin. I know that I'll be doing more reading about this interesting couple. ...more

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May 26, 2013 Jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: france, between-the-wars, classic, 1001

A beautifully written book, which might explain why I slowed down and savored this more than I normally would. Especially strong is the way Fitzgerald describes the shifting-sands nature of the balance of power between Dick and Nicole as they wrestle with their individual demons. Definitely a dysfunctional relationship, but Fitzgerald captures the allure of that dynamic perfectly.

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