Tender Is the Night
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Summary
Psychiatrist Dick Diver marries his wealthy, mentally fragile patient Nicole and settles among a glamorous circle of American expatriates on the French Riviera, their marriage and his career slowly disintegrating under the weight of her illness, his drinking, and the corrosive influence of inherited wealth. Fitzgerald drew heavily on his own marriage to the troubled Zelda Fitzgerald, producing a darker and more structurally ambitious novel than Gatsby though a far less commercially successful one. Critics have increasingly come to rank it among his finest achievements.
Historical Context & Significance
The 1935 Pulitzer for fiction went to Josephine Winslow Johnson's Now in November, a spare Depression era farm novel. Tender Is the Night sold poorly on release and further damaged Fitzgerald's declining reputation in the years before his death.