Tender Is The Night
(F. Scott Fitzgerald)
In my opinion, having read all Fitzgerald's works, his most outstanding book. This is a story about a psychiatrist who has married one of his patients, but starts concentrating on a girl actress who is rather star-struck and immature in her dealings with people. The setting is the lovely French Riviera, in that golden age between the wars when it truly had style. The central characters, in their social status and some of the locations, are loosely based on the Fitzgeralds themselves.
We see, over the duration of this, one of Fitzgerald's longest books, a gradual change in the juxta-positions of the central characters. The psychiatrist's wife, who has suffered psychological trauma through child abuse by her father, through the psychiatrist's efforts, very slowly and gradually regains her strength and composure, so that, in the end, rich and confident in her surpassing beauty, she needs him less and less, while he, failing to act properly as a partner in a clinic, needs her more and more. We realise not too far into the book the reason why we are initially introduced to the actress, who, significantly as is obvious, has been acting in a movie called 'Daddy's Girl': the whole book in fact starkly illustrates the difference between fantasy and reality.
Interwoven into an impressively strong storyline, written with the poetic beauty and sensitivity that transcends all Fitzgerald's works, we have cameos of interesting, mainly likeable people, wonderful romantic settings and magnificent descriptive passages.
This book I strongly recommend to serious, intelligent readers including, of course, examination students of English literature. If you have never read Fitzgerald before, I suggest reading a shorter work first; perhaps The Great Gatsby or The Last Tycoon.
Resumos Relacionados
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