Tender Is the Night (Cover May Vary)

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Book Overview

A modern classic, this edition has been restored by Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III and features a personal foreword by Fitzgerald's great-granddaughter Blake Hazard and a new introduction by... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068480154X
• ISBN13: 9780684801544
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: Scribner
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.9" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Perfumed heaven, but for the madness.

This is my favorite Fitzgerald novel, primarily for its biographical proximity to their similarly glamourous and ghastly marriage. The story opens on the unspoiled Riviera where money and adventure ruled, the Divers were the epitome of the expatriots of the Lost Generation/Jazz Age. Not only mythically gorgeous, Mrs. Diver was an ideal as a mother and dramatic gardener. She removes to an Eden-like retreat of lush and fragrant blooms that is infamous for its mistakes, i.e. Fitzgerald's lack of familiarity mixing tulips with sunflowers and other late summer blooms. The endless parties and thrill seeking begins to cloud the horizon and the startling secret that the couple have been trying to elude, breaks into a storm. The unraveling of this pharntom perfection is indeed `Tender' and ineffably sad. Zelda and Scott scaled Olympus as well, and suffered from excess and what was explained as a streak of madness in Zelda's family like a fatal flaw. The alcohol factor, in Zelda, given the advantage of the times, seems far more likely the major factor for her suffering than some arcane mental illness. Fitzgerald and Zelda were co-dependent, last stage alcoholics with irresponsible and self-centered natures, the ingredients of tragedy and self-destruction. The ingredients often of great writers. Yet, in Tender Is the Night, it is more as if madness comes like fate to challenge such god-given beauty and glory. The hot Riviera, white walled, and perfumed heaven is no where else so perfectly envisioned. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is generally considered a better work, but for pure mood to attach to the Lost Generation, this is by far and away the one that touches my heart.