BOOK REVIEW
I have just finished F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, for maybe the third time.
It was first published in 1934 and is a hauntingly lyrical exploration of love, disillusionment, and the psychological toll of idealism.
This novel is less polished and more personal than The Great Gatsby, but it might hit even harder emotionally and be a throwback to when authors wrote with all heart.
It is a beautifully written and an emotionally complex novel that explores themes of love, mental illness, ambition, and the slow unravelling of identity.
The story follows the perfect couple Dick and Nicole Diver and the deep fractures hidden behind their glamorous façade.
The narrative structure is unconventional, as the story begins from the perspective of a young actress, Rosemary Hoyt, who becomes infatuated with the Divers.
What starts as a bright, romantic tale told through her eyes slowly shifts into a darker, more intimate portrait of a marriage built on instability.
Set along the glittering French Riviera in the 1920s, the novel tells the Divers’ tragic story; their charm and sophistication mask deep personal traumas and moral decay.
Dick Diver is a once-promising psychiatrist whose marriage to Nicole, one of his former patients, gradually undermines his ambition, integrity, and sense of self.
Dick’s disintegration is gradual, marked by career failures, poor decisions and a growing detachment from himself and others.
Fitzgerald subtly suggests that emotional strain, disillusionment and misplaced idealism can also erode mental health.
As Nicole gains stability, Dick experiences a psychological decline, burnout, alcoholism and loss of purpose.
Nicole, beautiful and fragile, is both a source of inspiration and a burden Dick cannot escape.
Dick’s slow undoing mirrors the decline of the American expatriate dream that Fitzgerald himself knew so intimately.
Nicole suffers from schizophrenia (referred to as a nervous illness in the novel), which is rooted in trauma – specifically, sexual abuse by her father.
Nicole’s illness is depicted with empathy.
Filtered through Dick’s perspective, her episodes are not melodramatic but quietly destabilising with emotional distance and a period of instability, or withdrawal.
Fitzgerald’s prose is exquisite, lyrical, nuanced, and often heartbreaking, and his command of language renders even mundane scenes rich with emotional depth.
This beauty is often undercut by the novel’s tone, as Fitzgerald writes during his own period of personal crisis, laying bare the consequences of compromised ideals.
Tender Is the Night is not an easy novel – it demands patience and attention, but it rewards the reader with a profound emotional experience and some of Fitzgerald’s finest writing
It is a poignant, tragic meditation on beauty, love and loss, and is still one of the most underrated gems of 20th century American literature.
The prose is classic Fitzgerald – lyrical, rich and full of emotional depth – but the structure of the novel can feel disjointed at times, with shifting timelines and perspectives that challenge the reader to piece things together.
It’s not always easy, but it’s rewarding.
Julie Chessman
