Impressions - Tender is the Night

The first book on my reading challenge list, Tender is the Night, is a novel written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. It is partially based on his own life experiences, his spiral into alcoholism and his wife Zelda's increasing psychological problems.

The book is divided into various parts, each part taking place at a particular location during a one to three year time span and representing one important step in the lives of the two protagonists.

The most focused on protagonist of the novel is Dick Diver, a young and handsome, if not particularly rich, American who left his homeland for Europe during the first World War and remained in Switzerland after the war had ended. Having studied there to become a psychologist, he works at a Kurort for the wealthy, where he meets Nicole Warren, a very pretty, very young and very rich American girl who is suffering from schizophrenia.
Although he is cautioned not to marry her, since her sister, Baby Warren, would prefer to marry Nicole to a Chicago doctor fresh out of school, he goes ahead and marries her. Her father, a self-made millionaire who, after his wife's death, started making advances to Nicole when she was young, provides them with plenty of money. They invest in a hotel and beach resort on the French Riviera, and live seemingly happy, until an American movie star shows up, Rosemary, who is barely eighteen years old and, having had not much experience with men, firmly decides to ensnare Dick.
Dick, although he does not actually wish for a love affair, goes ahead with it anyways.
Rosemary is partially a protagonist, since the part of the book with the Divers living on the Riviera is entirely from her perspective.
The perspective of most of the parts is from Dick, such as the next few parts with Dick and Nicole and their two children returning to Switzerland and Dick becoming a part-owner of an institute along with his friend, making the health resort a permanent residence for the Divers. As Nicole's health deteriorates, with no help from the letter that Dick receives that accuses him of making advances to one of the female patients, Dick decides to leave the town and go for a long trip through Europe.
Ironically, Nicole's mental health goes back to normal, but Dick's mental and physical health slops down drastically, as he meets Rosemary in Rome and manages to land himself in prison, having to be bailed out by his hated sister-in-law, Baby.
He returns home and worries everyone about the changes made in him. He suddenly gives his children his full attention, becomes an alcoholic and does not seem to care that much about his work anymore. He travels with Nicole, hoping that it would do her and the children some good.
In the end, the perspective changes to Nicole, who has hitherto been the most important protagonist next to Dick, but has seldom had a chapter from her point of view. Nicole, feeling stronger than before, has an affair with Tommy Barban, an old flame. Tommy straight-out tells Dick that he wants to marry his wife, and Dick agrees to a divorce. The final separation of Dick and Nicole occurs quietly and gracefully, with Nicole marrying Tommy and taking care of the kids, while Dick abandons the high-class, luxurious life of a millionaire and returns to his middle-class roots in America.

Now, that is a somewhat detailed, if muddy, synopsis of the book. Interestingly, although there are three different perspectives, namely Dick, Rosemary and Nicole, the entire novel is written from a third-person limited perspective. Fitzgerald's knowledge of rich society, its vices and its pleasures, are poignantly depicted and at times juxtaposed with the poorer, simpler people from the middle and lower classes. The writing itself is true to Fitzgerald's usual style, such as can be found in his short stories or in The Great Gatsby. It is a flowingly smooth, rich style that mirrors the wealth and fortune of the protagonists very well and brings across the thoughts and the emotions of the characters realistically. Tender is the Night is as enjoyable and amusing as it is sorrowful and didactic, placing it as one of the great classics on the bookshelf of American literature.
Personally, I have found the book heavier than The Great Gatsby, not by physical weight but by literary absorption. There is a lot of the characters, settings, feelings and thoughts to take in at once. This might be a reason why it was not received as well as The Great Gatsby, though another reason might be the focus on the idle rich, who possess over such an abundance of money and comfort, that their family problems become the only real problems that they have to face, thereby enlarging the conflicts within the family and destabilizing the household, which is constantly on the verge of collapsing, requiring but a gentle push or a nudge to finally tip over.
There is enough pomp and luxury in the novel's passages to make the novel interesting for readers who might be daunted by the psychological and social analyses that appear every now and then.
As for the characters, the most memorable ones are Dick and Nicole, who both swim in the grey pool of morality, so to speak. The book is full of grey-grey morality. There is no strictly good side and no strictly bad side, because there are times when one oscillates between both sides.
The ending was very bitter sweet, and I like bitter sweet. The Great Gatsby's ending was much more tragic. Although there deaths in this book, none of them are overly shocking or tragic, and there are none at the end. Dick and Nicole divorce, but afterwards they both end up happy, in a contented-with-life sort of way.

My final verdict of Tender is the Night is that it is a book that people should read once. I doubt that you would want to read it a second time, as I would not, mainly because the chief fascination and surprises in the novel occur to those who are reading it for the first time. Tender is the Night holds, however, a special place in my heart, because I made use of it during my German Abitur exams last Friday, and the plot suited my purposes to a tee. I was overjoyed, to say the least.

From a scale of 0 to 10, I would give this book an 8, great to read the first time around and an essential piece of American 20th century literature. However, if you are unused to classical literature, especially to Fitzgerald's oeuvre, or you are disinterested in the life of American millionaires, then you may find it a tad boring and heavy to read.