Tender is the Night: a romance (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Scott Fitzgerald, F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141183594 ISBN 13: 9780141183596

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2001

Synopsis

F. Scott Fitzgerald's last completed novel, Tender is the Night is edited by Arnold Goldman with an introduction and notes by Richard Godden in Penguin Modern Classics.

Between the First World War and the Wall Street Crash the French Riviera was the stylish place for wealthy Americans to visit. Among the most fashionable are psychoanalyst Dick Diver and his wife Nicole, who hold court at their villa. Into their circle comes Rosemary Hoyt, a film star, who is instantly attracted to them, but understands little of the dark secrets and hidden corruption that hold them together. As Dick draws closer to Rosemary, he fractures the delicate structure of his marriage and sets both Nicole and himself on to a dangerous path where only the strongest can survive. In this exquisite, lyrical novel, Fitzgerald has poured much of the essence of his own life; he has also depicted the age of materialism, shattered idealism and broken dreams.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) has acquired a mythical status in American literary history, and his masterwork The Great Gatsby is considered by many to be the 'great American novel'. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, dubbed 'the first American Flapper', and their traumatic marriage and Zelda's gradual descent into insanity became the leading influence on his writing. As well as many short stories, Fitzgerald wrote five novels This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night and, incomplete at the time of his death, The Last Tycoon. After his death The New York Times said of him that 'in fact and in the literary sense he created a "generation" '.

If you enjoyed Tender is the Night, you might like Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, also available in Penguin Classics.

'One of the most wonderful writers of the twentieth century'
Financial Times

About this title

Review:

On the 1920s Riviera the rich and hedonistic disport themselves, drawn by the brilliance and promise of Dr Dick Diver and his fragile wife, Nicole. No one is more infatuated than Rosemary, the beautiful young starlet who will become the main force in Dick's eventual destruction. There's a timelessness about the vacuity of this soulless set that makes the whole dismal story a powerful fable for our times, made totally convincing by the finely nuanced narration. --Rachel Redford, The Observer

F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1934 Tender is the Night was his last and most painfully conceived novel. Based on personal experience (the schizophrenia of his wife, Zelda, his affair with a Hollywood actress and the time they spent in Paris, Switzerland and on the Cote d'Azur), it is a sad but hauntingly beautiful exploration of the way in which a needy person leaches the spirit out of a strong one. Dick and his wife Nicole seem to be the most glamorous of couples, but gradually the tragic secrets of their past emerge. Trevor White reads with subtly shifting pace and complete command. --Christina Hardyment, The Times

Book Description:

A heartbreaking American masterpiece of the 'Roaring Twenties' by the author of The Great Gatsby

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0141183594
• ISBN 13: 9780141183596
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Arnold Goldman