Love in the Night

Name: Love in the Night
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Love in the Night," seventeen-year-old Val Rostoff, half Russian and half American, lives with his parents in a villa at Cannes in the spring of 1914. His father is Prince Paul Serge Boris Rostoff, a Russian aristocrat related to the czar; his mother is the American daughter of Chicago financier Morris Hasylton. Val has fallen into a private reverie about the phrase "love in the night," imagining it will happen to him someday under the Riviera moon, but the season is ending and he has found no chance for romance. One evening his mother, Princess Rostoff, is leaving for a dinner aboard an American yacht anchored in Cannes harbor — either the Minnehaha or the Privateer, she isn't sure which. Val arrives home too late to go with his parents but is told to follow afterward. He hires a boatman to row him out to find the yacht. He first reaches the Privateer by mistake, where an unseen young woman's voice calls to him from the deck and asks him to stay. He climbs aboard and meets her: a slim, young, married-seeming but unnamed American girl of seventeen. They talk, each refusing to give the other their name, and fall into an intense, romantic exchange as music drifts from the Minnehaha nearby. Val declares his love and they kiss. Just before her family returns, she reveals that she is married — three months ago — and calls that marriage the "mistake" she had been brooding over. An older man's voice then calls from a boat below, and Val realizes, too late, how much he cares. The Rostoffs and other Russian aristocrats leave Cannes for the summer, expecting to return, but they never do. The Kerensky government collapses in 1917; Val is a lieutenant on the eastern front. His parents are killed in the Russian Revolution. Val fights for a time with Denikin's army, then goes to France, penniless. He returns to Cannes, sells his dress suit for money, and becomes a taxi driver, later obtaining a clerking job at an English bank through a former tennis acquaintance. He lives a modest, solitary life, no longer recognized as a former prince, and each year takes his vacation during the last two weeks of April, the anniversary of his night on the yacht, to remember it. Three years after that night, on an April evening in 1922, a boatman tells Val that a wealthy widowed American lady's yacht anchors in the harbor every year for the last two weeks of April, and that he is paid to wait there each night doing nothing. Val realizes this must be the same woman. Unable to sleep, he resolves not to seek her out but is happy to know she remembers him too. The next day, headed to the train station for his vacation, he impulsively goes instead to the American consulate to ask who owns the yacht Privateer. A clerk stalls him, revealing that the consulate has been waiting three years for this very inquiry. The young woman herself then appears in the doorway — she has returned every April for three years hoping to see him again. They finally exchange names and are introduced. The story closes by noting that, unlike the failed "international marriages" of tabloid legend, the young Rostoffs' marriage has produced no scandalous headlines. Prince Val now runs a fleet of moonlight-blue taxicabs, and he and his wife live in New York, leaving only once a year — so that a boatman still rejoices each mid-April when the Privateer steams into Cannes harbor.

By F. Scott Fitzgerald · First published 1929 · Genre: Romance, Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age · 5 chapters · 7,611 words

First lines

The words thrilled Val. They had come into his mind sometime during the fresh gold April afternoon and he kept repeating them to himself over and over: "Love in the night; love in the night. " He tried them in three languages -- Russian, French and English -- and decided that they were best in English. In each language they meant a different sort of love and a different sort of night -- the English night seemed the warmest and softest with a thinnest and most crystalline sprinkling of stars. The English love seemed the most fragile and romantic -- a white dress and a dim face above it and eyes that were pools of light. And when I add that it was a French night he was thinking about, after all, I see I must go back and begin over.

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Love in the Night is listed on Textopian as a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, dated 1929 CE.

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Work type: Novel
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Date: 1929 CE
Language: English
Genres: Romance, Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age, Historical Fiction, Drama
Length: 7,611 words
Structure: 5 chapters, 186 paragraphs
Reading fit: Very Easy (5th Grade or below)

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Discussion starters

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Similar titles

Genres

Romance — The central theme revolves around love, particularly first love, and the emotional experiences associated with it.
Literary Fiction — The writing style is introspective and character-driven, focusing on the complexities of human emotions and relationships.
Coming-of-Age — The protagonist's journey reflects the transition from youth to adulthood, exploring themes of identity and personal growth.
Historical Fiction — The backdrop of pre-war Europe and the socio-political context of the time influence the characters' lives and decisions.