Product Description

To the French Riviera come Dick and Nicole Diver. Handsome, rich and glamorous, their dinners are legendary, their atmosphere magnetic. But something is wrong - Nicole has a secret and Dick a weakness. Together they head towards the rocks on which their lives crash - and only one of them really survives. Fitzgerald worked on seventeen versions of this novel, the obsessions of which consumed his marriage and his life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1701 in Books
• Published on: 1997-12-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
Again an author who has built up a more or less established market, and his non appearance (in book form) over a period of several years, has stimulated interest in this first full length work since the publication of THE GREAT GATSBY. A story of a psychiatrist, and of his lovely wife - a marriage, on the surface ideally happy, but eaten underneath by the insecurity of its basis, and the coils that riches have placed around the husband. Against a background of the Riviera, of Paris, of Switzerland and a mental sanitarium, the drama is played out. The comparison with PRIVATE WORLDS, which is inevitable, is not a sound one. The selling point of this book is the story itself, the almost morbid fascination of the lurking mystery, the deft shift of atmosphere from the gay nonchalance of the Riviera sands, to the horrors of the tragedy in a Paris hotel, and the final, and rather unexpected denouement. The psychological aspects are neither so sound nor so interesting as the Bottome book. This is for a less serious audience - though not the college crowd that drank in his early books. Not wholly satisfactory, in final analysis - but good reading. Headlined as the leading book on the publisher's list and sure of a good send-off. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
To the French Riviera come Dick and Nicole Diver. Handsome, rich and glamorous, their dinners are legendary, their atmosphere magnetic. But something is wrong - Nicole has a secret and Dick a weakness. Together they head towards the rocks on which their lives crash - and only one of them really survives. Fitzgerald worked on seventeen versions of this novel, the obsessions of which consumed his marriage and his life.

About the Author
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD was born in St Paul, Minnesota in 1896. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, and their traumatic marriage became the leading influence in his writing. Among his publications were five novels: This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby,The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and The Last Tycoon (his last, unfinished work). He died in 1940, having earned a place among the greatest writers of this century.

Customer Reviews

Fitzgerald's most personal novel
In a Swiss sanatorium above lake Zürich, Dr Richard (Dick) Diver meets a fascinating young patient, Nicole Warren. Nicole suffers from Divided Personality at its acute down-hill phase which translates in her fear of men because she was the victim of incest after her mother's death.
Nicole's state improves after some time at the clinic and Richard marries her. They move to the French Riviera where they live in the glamour provided by Nicole's family money but soon their luck runs out.
This novel is Fitzgerald's most personal one if one considers that his own wife Zelda became increasingly troubled with mental illness in the 1930s and so the story of Dick Diver and his schizophrenic wife Nicole shows the pain that the author went through himself. It is the moving account of the collapse of a marriage and an attempt to diagnose the sickness and destruction that money breeds. Dick's final loneliness in the novel reflects Fitzgerald's own dive into drink and despair.

Beautiful Writing
This review is intentionally very short, as other reviews consider the novel in more detail. It is worth noting that this novel demonstrates Fitzgerald's skill as a writer to the full, and is a pleasure to read.

The purpose of this review is to clarify a point raised in another review, which asks about why this Popular Classics edition appears to present a corrupt, or at least unauthorised text. The reason for this is that it follows the structure of the novel as set out in the 1951 revision, edited by Malcolm Cowley, based on notes and corrections made by Fitzgerald himself. This revision of the original 1934 text rearranges the novel into chronological order, and divides the text into a different number of sections. This is why the Spark Notes referred to by another reviewer are confusing: they describe the 1934 text. It should be noted that, according to the Penguin Modern Classics edition at least, current critical thinking prefers the 1934 edition, as Cowley's interventions in the later edition make it unclear the extent to which Fitzgerald's intentions were followed.

Of course, no exam board would ever bother to be clear as to which text is to be studied: that would be far too easy for us all, wouldn't it?

A story of destructive love.
This is a powerful story of two people loving each other for the wrong reasons and whose love takes a course neither truly wants, but can't seem to move away from. Told in a deceptively simple style, it has great depth in it's story telling and a way of making you feel as deeply as the characters. It may not have the most positive of endings, but I like it all the more for this reason, as it is truer to real life. A beautifully written book to be enjoyed again and again.