Tender is the Night

The characters aren't worth caring about. In many ways, I think that's part of why I found this novel so compelling. An early reviewer called them “trivial people”, which reportedly annoyed Fitzgerald: he must have recognized the truth of it. No matter. Those shallow, petty characters reflect much of what we hold dear in ourselves and Fitzgerald shows us ourselves, our lives, our hopes. Each of us thinks of ourself as a good person, wants to be a good person, but things happen. We find ourselves in places where we don't want to be, without knowing how we got there. Tender is the Night is such a story and it's rare to go five pages without an “Aha” moment, a clearly worded insight, a pause of recognition. Fitzgerald saw and understood much. Even better, he's able to write about it with compassion and, yes, tenderness. If I'm around in another ten years, remind me to pick this one up again. I'd like to see what I missed on this reading.

Hmm. After reading and loving The Great Gatsby, I was looking forward to reading this, however I don't think it is coherent enough to reach those heights. Despite this, there are flashes of brilliance (hence the 4 stars) - I just wish it was able to maintain them throughout.

The first third of this book is an evocative portrayal of the life of a group of American upper and upper-middle class people on the French Riviera in the 1920's, at the cusp of it becoming a summer tourist destination (the implication being that these people made it the destination it became). The description of the interactions and dinner parties are enthralling.

After this however, it descends into a far less involving description of the evolution of the main couple's relationship. It also has a habit of switching through multiple viewpoints almost in the same paragraph, which is distracting. I also suspect that the language and context has not aged well, which makes some of the events that are meant to be important seem remarkably trivial (an alcoholic is largely signposted by their occasional faux-pas at parties, when a more modern reading would probably require something more significant). Most of the characters also seem deeply unsympathetic, which makes it hard to care about them.

I suspect you might get more from this if you are deeply familiar with F. Scott Fitzgerald's life story, since, after reading up further, it is apparent that this is obviously meant to be semi-autobiographical.

Dick Driver is a psychiatrist with a crazy, though rich wife. They travel together around France and don't seem to know what to do with themselves.

Driver meets a young actress who is taken with him, but it not until five years later, that the two become involved. Neither is in love, and Driver seems to have forgotten about his wife and children, so, once again, another sad story.

So promising to begin with but somehow it went off the rails. When we go back in time to see the evolution of Dick‰ЫЄs and Nicole‰ЫЄs relationship, we are supposed to get to know them better, but we never really do. Dick, especially, seems simply to fade out. I would have been more interested in seeing what Rosemary was up to, honestly. Knowing a little bit about Fitzgerald‰ЫЄs very personal investment in this story, I can‰ЫЄt help making assumptions and jumping to conclusions about how the story came about and why it has the flaws it does, but I don‰ЫЄt think I‰ЫЄll go there. In the end this was such a personal book from one of the great writers and you take the bad with the good.