Rating: 
Summary: life changing
Review: This book is so deep, I can't describe it in any other way but life changing. It takes the reader deep into human emotions so true to life and touches the heart of the reader with the ability to change one's way of thinking. It is an example of how people can do things to each other without thinking of consequences and the reaction of others to such things. Poses the question, is it worth the history of a relationship to seek out some new and exciting pleasure, and should someone examine the possible emotional outcome before delving into something so quickly?
Rating:
Summary: Fitzgerald's Forgotten Masterpiece
Review: The Great Gatsby is without a single doubt one of the greatest American novels ever written and has well deserved its position as a permanent fixture in American literarture classes. Everyone and their sister had read The Great Gatsby. I personally loved it, but that was before I read Tender is the Night. It touched my heart and got under my skin an infinity more deeply than The Great Gatsby. It is a work that cries with hopelessness, loneliness, and broken dreams. Tender is the Night chronicles the downfall and eventual ruin of Dick Diver, a smart, handsome pshychiatrist. He has everything in life going for him. He has friends, beautiful children, money, ability, and so much love for his wife Nicole. But this idealistic life can not long endure and Dick's sparkling world soon begins to unravel. Nicole turns out to be a schizophrenic. Though her mental illness has been dormant for years, it begins to resurface, destroying Dick's confidence, optimism, his marriage, and his very life. Tender is the Night is almost painful in its emotion. Fitzgerald seems to have filled the very pages of the book full of his tears. As this book was written, his own wife Zelda institutionalized as a schizophrenic, making this novel semi-autobiographical. This work is so astounding simply because of the feeling it reveals straight from the heart of its author, making it one of the most intimate portraits I have ever read. Tender is the Night is an absolute masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Drifting Through Splendor
Review: Or: Of Love and Loss: the Sacrifice for Gain. *Tender is the Night,* F. Scott Fitzgerald's tragic fourth novel, shimmers with palpable autobiographical pain; it is catharsis, plain as day, for the regrets and reduction of a personal life, and the era that encompassed it. Fragmentary yet fully contained, brilliantly lucid as it describes the derailment of sanity, via incest-trauma or the alcoholic haze - *Tender is the Night* flows like a tone poem, vividly capturing the illusions and sickened foundations of its flawed protagonists, and the escapist existence in which they dwell. Herein lay ghosts, drifting through splendor, oblivious until it is too late, and then insensate still, crippled by self-imposed restrictions: the patterns of denial, dissipation and dream-death. The novel concerns the relationship between married couple Dick and Nicole Diver, the husband a promising young psychiatrist with obscure goals about published research, the wife a fragile flower soiled early in life, the 'damaged goods' he takes on to teach, heal, and subconsciously reap in turn. At first, presented through the innocent gaze of child-actress Rosemary, the Divers seem like the quintessence of their sophisticated era: clever, classy, both elegant and subtly sensual, people so comfortable with themselves as to avoid the games and struts of the current 'season.' Young, restful, in love with each other and life in general, the Divers exhibit the ideal of the American Dream, if expatriat-ed from American soil . . . but the cracks begin to show, one by one, until the cultivated artifice is shattered and the sickness beneath exposed: the author therein chronicles the dissolution of this relationship, from beginning to end, drawing significant parallel from both his own life and the turbulent age in which he lived. *Tender is the Night*: A requiem for a dream. Certainly the fallout with his wife Zelda influenced the novel's course; but I believe there is more to it. F. Scott Fitzgerald, and by extension his work, was/is inescapably tied with the exuberant façade of the Jazz Era, an era defined (at least in the socialite sense) by its splendor and waste, its heedless optimism blind of cost. And though Scott basked in the cradle of this opulent "season," the author seething beneath the fly-by-night exterior could not help but be keenly aware of its follies and hypocrisies: his novels and short stories savagely depict the inward condemnation he felt. But unlike earlier efforts, this, Scott's last completed novel, was composed between 1925 and 1934, and the disintegration of the roaring 20's into the dust-bowl Depression of the 30's seems to me clearly represented in the progression from *Tender's* first to third books - the illusion has crashed and there is no regaining it, despite the determined dissipative efforts contrary. This is a personal impression, one I read between the lines; and even considering the fact that Fitz lived overseas and that the events of this novel occurred almost completely in France and Switzerland, the metaphor is quite stark - to my mind, at least. A more literal analysis, in any regard, clearly shows the price of atrophy, lost ambition and alcoholism; despite the 'happy' resolution to Nicole and Dick's co-dependency, the pain of loss - on both a psychic and physical level - is harrowingly delineated. Having recently been in the position of Dick Diver - that is, faced with the temptation of sacrificing personal goals in order to 'save' another from the manic-spiral - I can sympathize with the capitulation of his dreams for more immediate concerns: genetic-inspired attraction as strong a demand as the survival-instinct drive. Yet Nicole's rise, surmounting both the Father and the Father Figure in her quest for identity, is just as poignant. The antagonist here is simply _weakness_, and how it can be shared to disastrous result. To define the myriad qualities of *Tender is the Night* into simplistic buzz-word recommendation: this is a haunting, occasionally stunning work, with beautifully lyrical prose and well-defined conflict, interspersed with casual insights into the urges/constructs of human reality. All in all it's a fantastic read, and perhaps my personal favorite of F. Scott Fitzgerald's work; (...) Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: It hit close to home.
Review: When I critique a literary work, I often consider the same elements that any other critic may: plot, theme, diction, style, etc. However, it is a rare occurrence when someone reads a story to which he/she can absolutely relate. After all, literature is best at providing a person with a way in which to be entertained, yet learn something about him/herself. In my case, I read Tender Is The Night during a period when I was breaking up with my girlfriend. If it were not for this situation, I would not have appreciated this work, but due to my circumstances, I became especially interested. I found that I could relate to many of Dick Diver's emotions, while at the same time I realized the genius with which Fitzgerald writes this novel. I knew that a person could learn a lot about him/herself through reading since literature can act as a mirror which people can see themselves, but I never knew that reading could create such an intimate experience that would hit me so close to home. Nevertheless, this book is one of the greatest literary works that I have ever read, and I would suggest that this would be a great novel for anyone who enjoys tragic human behavior.
Rating:
Summary: A great ape
Review: North America escaped the wave of Nihilism that beleaguered Europe after the Great War. Although escaping the horrendous casualty lists of the European nations, Americans aped Continental disillusionment with their own, anaemic version, of it. Retaining greater resources, America's wealthy survivors returned to Europe, filled with cynicism and indifference. Few books have caught the attitudes of interwar Americans as vividly as this one. It is a Judas kiss in depicting America's social values of the time. Few could enjoy the life he describes, yet all aspired to it. Fitzgerald caught and portrayed the segment of that society most people seem to remember. It's a limited view, but tightly focussed. Richard Diver, married to what was then termed a "neurotic" woman, encounters a young movie star. Films were still silent and actresses were chosen for their physical appeal. Rosemary, although still a teen-ager, fills the image perfectly. Immature, notorious and vivacious, she sets her sights on Diver. Encouraged by her mother, although the motivation for this remains unclear, Rosemary applies her wiles on a man twice her age. As the two encounter, separate and meet again, they interact with members of the expatriate community in France. Fitzgerald portrays most of them through the couple's viewpoint. The depictions are compelling and evocative, but there isn't an appealling one in the lot. Diver's role in the new [then] Freudian psychology gives Fitzgerald a mechanism for exploring the human psyche. The dismemberment of Freud's analysis by modern studies doesn't detract from Fitzgerald's descriptive prowess. Even from this distance in time he's remains a writer to turn to and reflect on. He's deservedly acclaimed as one of the "greats" of the twenties.
[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating:
Summary: Fitzgerald's Autobiography
Review: Tender Is the Night is uncomfortably autobiographical, written after Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, was institutionalized. Though it begins with the story of Rosemary, an actress on vacation, hopelessly attracted to Dick Diver, a married man and successful psychiatrist, the story changes, without transtition, to focus on Dick and his wife's unsettling past. Rosemary fades almost completely out of the story while Fitzgerald, vicariously through Dick Diver, explores his coming to (or failure to come to) grips with ageing, his marriage, postwar stress, and the fear that ultimately his promising career would fail. Fitzgerald literally fulfilled his prophecy and never published another novel. As with most Modern American literature, Tender Is the Night is a depressing story. We witness the dissolution of marriage, man, and find the Lost Generation ultimately just that--lost. It's been several years since I read The Great Gatsby, but if memory still serves, Tender Is the Night is more captivating and, in my opinion, the better of the two.
Rating: 
Summary: Terribly overrated
Review: I struggled to finish this book. It is laden with trivial charactersand the plot drags on endlessly while Fitzgerald keeps blindly grasping for the magic he had before he destroyed his mind with alcohol.
The writing in this novel is sloppy at best, and, as he confessed to his sometime-friend Ernest Hemingway (see Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast"), he often altered his writing for the sake of financial gain. This novel, which took over ten years to create, looks like the pained work of a man who has run out of gas. His focus was diverted by his alcoholism, his lust for financial success over artistry, and his wife's instability, and it shows.
The book drags on endlessly, and it looks like Fitzgerald is just trying to fill up pages (which he may have been, because Scribner wasn't happy with the much shorter length of The Great Gatsby).
Sure, there are a bunch of pretty sentences, and even a few unbelievable paragraphs scattered throughout, but good sentences don't make a good story, and they certainly don't overcome the weakness of these characters.
Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: i recomend this to anyone who enjoys fitzgerald, it is perhaps his best work ever
Rating:
Summary: no Gatsby, but still good
Review: Tender is the Night is no Gatsby (though what is), but it is still an important novel. It is more personal than the other of Fitzgerald's work and covers happy days in France through the madness and alcoholism that follows. As great as this novel was, there were some weaknesses. It did seem to get weaker as it went along. Part One is the best, Part Two is weaker and weakens as it goes along. And Part Three is the weakest of all--even Fitzgerald himself admitted that. Still, it is well written and you can see why Fitzgerald is an American classic.
Rating:
Summary: Quiet sacrifices, tender regrets
Review: Tender is the Night was written over a decade, and it shows. Characters grow, stop, we fast forward, and they change and mature without transition. Tempting is the correlations between Fitzgerald's companionship with mentally unhinged Zelda and Dick Diver's nurturing husband/psychotherapist to Nicole, an heiress and ex-schizoid in occasional relapse who was traumatized by her father at a tender age. Tender is Dick's caressing but scientific approach to loving Nicole. When Rosemary Hoyt, a young starlet-to-be, pursues Dick with all due diligence, Dick loses the cool stability of his marriage experiment for the exciting, verily unscientific, if affected, opportunity to feel something new. Having committed himself to Nicole's love and care despite his better reason, Dick lives with the consequences he signed on to live with. His wife, recovering from her deep, despairing mental illness, sucks the life out of Dick, gaining strength with each drop of vigor he loses, fully aware of his inevitable failure. Tender is the Night, where Fitzgerald starts to show the influence of Hollywood (not incidental, the Rosemary character, ey?) on his narrative composition, feels like a cast of actors playing their roles with converse dramatic irony. Nicole's and Dick's anticipation of the paths they are on, curves, divergences and all, perhaps account for the absence of dramatic tension and suspense in Tender is the Night. It is, instead, a journal of selected scenes catching the moods and musings of a doomed marriage, often striking poignancy at a perfect pitch.
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