Tender Is the Night (Hardcover)

I really liked Part One, but things really went south in Part Two. I really didn't see how Rosemary fit into the plot at all; she's this big-name rising starlet who is instantly warmly and closely befriended by all of Dick and Nicole's adult friends when they're in France, and she and Dick are mutually attracted to one another, an attraction strongly encouraged by Rosemary's mother. Unless there's something going on between the lines that I failed to see, this didn't seem like anything more than a young girl with a crush on an older married man, a crush that doesn't go much farther than some secret rendezvous where they don't do anything more than kiss, hold one another, and say sweet nothings. Then she drops out of their lives and doesn't appear again till close to the end, where she and Dick are talking like they shared some affair. How could the brief appearance of a young girl disrupt Dick and Nicole's marriage so much, esp. since they never even slept together? This is just like a lot of books with alleged affairs or love stories which are never given any motivation or credibility, explaining why these two people are attracted to one another and would want to leave an existing relationship for this new dangerous one. It really insults the reader's intelligence.

Besides the alleged love story, the character development of Dick and Nicole were also really wanting. We know that Nicole has been psychologically unstable anyway since she was a young girl (indeed, she and Dick met while he was treating her in a mental hospital), but there's no insight into why she goes back to her old unglued ways. Her behaviour doesn't even seem that out of control, just erratic and a bit strange. We also get no insight into why Dick also starts on a course towards his own mental breakdown. I had no understanding of why they began acting that way; why should I consider him the hero and root for him when I'm given no insight into his condition, no explanation or rationale for his behaviour, and when he doesn't want to deal with his wife's serious problems, who indeed even worsens them? There were also a few pointless and dead-end subplots, like Abe North's problems in Paris and the incident towards the end involving Mary North and Lady Sibley-Beers. The edition I read also had a lot of untranslated French passages, as though everyone still speaks French as a second language or even speaks it more often than their native tongue. Those days are gone, and there's no need to belabour the point by having whole conversations in French when the reader knows that they're in France and speaking to French people. The end of the book was also a big dead-end. The story was interesting, just not convincing, realistic, or believable.

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]