Tender is the Night

Fitzgerald's classic depicts the Jazz Age and the beautiful people who congregate on the French Riviera between the wars. In this evocative setting, amid a glamorous and harsh world of film stars, aristocrats, and socialites, Fitzgerald recounts the infatuations of American expatriates Richard Diver, a psychiatrist, and his wife, Nicole, his former patient. In a complex and versatile performance Trevor White skillfully portrays females voices without changing timbre and delivers nonverbal emotional utterances with verisimilitude. His youthful voice, expert pacing, and tone of empathy complement Fitzgerald's poetic chronicle of moral decline and the vagaries of fortune. One cannot overlook the parallels between Fitzgerald's own life and his account of the Divers, particularly his depiction of a gifted man who is enmeshed with a wealthy and unstable woman. A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

George Guidall brings to this classic the competence of the skilled professional, even if there's not as much passion in his narration as some listeners might want. Yet perhaps this understated rendering is appropriate: The novel is low key, a rather uninvolving portrait of rich, expatriot Americans cavorting about Europe after WWI. It's difficult for contemporary readers to like these people although it's easy to like Fitzgerald's stunning prose. Guidall is certainly up to its demands, differentiating among the characters, handling masterfully the many French and Swiss pronunciations, even singing a couple times in the former language. For these achievements we can forgive his emotional distance. T.H. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Fitzgerald's novel is set entirely in Europe, mostly in France. Everyone in the story can speak French and often does. Therese Plummer cannot pronounce French (or German or Italian) recognizably. This is not just a distraction; it's a serious casting mistake. No sense of place can be developed if you can't understand the place names given as the story changes scenes. Meaning is lost as you wonder who Goata is (Goethe?). Whole scenes are incomprehensible when dialogue is in French. (There's no translation in the text.) This was unfair to Plummer, who does some things very well and has a lovely voice. It's a total disservice to the listener and profoundly disrespectful to a classic American text. B.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Therese Plummer's narration gives a contemporary twist to Fitzgerald's somewhat lesser known--at least by GATSBY standards--but oft praised novel. Plummer's enthusiasm for the prose is palpable as her tone and timbre veer from velvety to harsh. Indeed, sometimes her energy becomes a distraction as there are sections where she seems to add an exclamation point where none is warranted. (For example, the sentence, "For a moment she stood beside him on the path!") However, Plummer's skill with varied voices and accents is without equal. She navigates Fitzgerald's glamorous world with panache, immersing the listener in the intense characters' personalities. The result is an entertaining production in which the narrative is as alive as the characters themselves. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine