Tender Is the Night

Tender is The Night is a novel by American writer: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Dick and Nicole Diver are a glamorous couple who take a villa in the South of France and surround themselves with a circle of friends, mainly Americans. Also staying at the resort are Rosemary Hoyt, a young actress, and her mother. Rosemary gets sucked into the circle of the Divers; she becomes infatuated with Dick and is also adopted as a close friend by Nicole. Dick first toys with the idea of an affair with Rosemary at this point, which he finally acts upon years later. Once into the book, the history of the Divers emerges. Dick Diver was a doctor and psychoanalyst and had taken on a complicated case of neuroses. This was Nicole, whose complicated, incestuous relationship with her father is suggested as the cause of breakdown. The underlying theme is then how one person has become strong by destroying another.