Tender is the Night
F Scott Fitzgerald
Tender is the Night is the tale of Nicole and Dick Diver’s marriage deterioration, which is precipitated by Rosemary Hoyt. Told from changing perspectives, it offers insights into a schizophrenic’s eyes, against a deteriorating and increasingly pedophilic man who is obsessed with young innocents.
Younger readers would have come across Fitzgerald because of his other text, The Great Gatsby. In Australia, it’s basically on every school English curriculum at some point. I found it preferable at least to the Australian literature texts I studied last term.
Surprisingly, I found myself quite enjoying this novel in a way that I didn’t expect, given that it was a literature text. However, when I got to Book II< the perspective of the novel started changing quite rapidly and confusingly, and this put me off. I couldn’t believe how stupid Dick and Rosemary were, and how quickly Nicole could deteriorate. Well, actually, I could understand how she could deteriorate, but I was a bit questionable about whether her character was an accurate representation of schizophrenia as it is categorised today.
The narrative points of this novel were fascinating. The perspective starts as Rosemary, and then moves onto Dick and often shows focalising of other characters. I actually wrote my essay on this, although I struggled to link the ‘meaning and distinctiveness’ of the novel to the narration.
I’ve sworn to myself to try and finish all of the set texts for my last literature course, but we’ll see how successful I am. Anyway, you should expect to see at least 5 more American literature text reviews coming in the next 9 or so weeks.
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Thank you for your insight! I'm slightly intrigued by this novel so I'll be takinga look on Amazon. <br /><br />Thanks for stopping by my blog! I love meeting new bloggers! 🙂 Look forward to future blog posts!
This is a book I've heard of, but never read, and after reading your review, I realize I didn't even know what it was about! I remember not being too in love with "The Great Gatsby" so I don't know if I'll ever read this, but it was great to finally know more about it. 🙂 I look forward to more review of your literature texts! I do love classics generally. :)<br /><br