Revolutionary Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Richard Yates
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard YatesEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-12-30
ISBN: 0307454789
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Revolutionary Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries)
Book Review: Road Not Taken Brings Tragedies
Summary: 5 Stars
"Revolutionary Road" is a beautifully written, bitter (and bitterly funny) critique of lost opportunities and timidity. It doesn't evoke an era as much as it defines the era -- for it was one of the first and best books to challenge the notion that the Eisenhower years were truly satisfying to many Americans. It brings to the surface the tensions of the late 1950s that blasted through the crust of American society by the early 1960s and that changed ... everything.
For me, the writing evokes Richard Ford, with memorable phrases popping up every few pages. Also, the author deftly moves between action, dialogue, and characters' interior monologues (with those often playing out how a conversation or incident might turn out, only to then find that in reality, it turns out differently). It's rare to find a book so carefully woven.
The plot centers around the disintegrating marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, who moved to Connecticut to raise their children. Prior to having kids, Frank and April lived in a grungy Village apartment in Manhattan, and they entertained dreams of having the rich intellectual and social life that the city could offer. When April became pregnant, they did what most people do: move out of town so that they could purchase a house more suitable for kids.
But the move to suburbia left them both stifled and frustrated, and it exposed the many flaws in their relationship. The book takes place over the course of about a year, but it reflects back on problems that had been in evidence for much longer.
The power of this seemingly mundane plot comes from author Richard Yates's ability to evoke the sense of loss and longing that envelop Richard and April -- yet without making them fully sympathetic characters. Their fights are legendary: insults, physical contact, days of silence aftewards. Their drinking is prodigious. They cheat on each other. At times, they truly despise each other, but they don't have the nerve to try to solve the problem.
Neither Richard nor April truly has the talent to reach great pinnaces -- a vague sense on the part of Richard that he's an intellectual destined for a writing career, and a half-hearted attempt by April to be a stage actress. Neither of them really tried very hard, and, in fact, April's pregnancy early in their marriage was a bit of an "out" for them to take the easier route of a middle-class life. Though April suggests taking a big risk by moving to Paris and starting over again, but Frank backs away from his last chance to break out of the pack.
Then, real tragedy strikes this "safe" life. April gets pregnant again, and she decides she wants to have an abortion -- which was illegal at the time. And it goes badly, setting off the final demise of the family and its dreams.
Just like it's hard to imagine driving drunk all the time, which the characters in the book do, it's hard to imagine the horror that would grip a woman contemplating an abortion in 1960. It's always a traumatic decision; heck, a woman wouldn't be even considering an abortion unless having the child was going to be traumatic in its own ways, too. But throw in the illegal nature of it, and thus the dangers of a do-it-yourself project at home or a back-office procedure by an unknown doctor, and it's the stuff of genuine nightmares.
As a child of parents who were married in New York City in 1960, I've heard my parents talk about their own missed opportunities. Mostly those were from my mother, who had ambitions of a career as a psychologist and clinical researcher, which were thwarted by society's expectations that she should become a high school teacher. She did what was expected -- with a decade hiatus from the workforce to raise three kids born less than three years apart (twins in the mix) -- and she felt lonely and unfulfilled at times.
For me, the biggest message of the book is the way it evokes mixed blessing of having new opportunities emerge in the 1950s, but still having to fight against the strong tide of societal expectations that made those opportunities little more than dreams for many talented people. It's hard to put ourselves in that time and place today, because most people with an education realize that they can do many different things in their lives. But it just wasn't the case in the 1950s, when we were tantalizingly showing emancipated women and men seeking "meaning" in their lives -- but yet still restricting them to the grindstone through our consumer culture of the lowest common denominator.
Summary of Revolutionary Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries)
In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to crumble.With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.
The rediscovery and rejuvenation of Richard Yates's 1961 novel Revolutionary Road is due in large part to its continuing emotional and moral resonance for an early 21st-century readership. April and Frank Wheeler are a young, ostensibly thriving couple living with their two children in a prosperous Connecticut suburb in the mid-1950s. However, like the characters in John Updike's similarly themed Couples, the self-assured exterior masks a creeping frustration at their inability to feel fulfilled in their relationships or careers. Frank is mired in a well-paying but boring office job and April is a housewife still mourning the demise of her hoped-for acting career. Determined to identify themselves as superior to the mediocre sprawl of suburbanites who surround them, they decide to move to France where they will be better able to develop their true artistic sensibilities, free of the consumerist demands of capitalist America. As their relationship deteriorates into an endless cycle of squabbling, jealousy and recriminations, their trip and their dreams of self-fulfillment are thrown into jeopardy.
Yates's incisive, moving, and often very funny prose weaves a tale that is at once a fascinating period piece and a prescient anticipation of the way we live now. Many of the cultural motifs seem quaintly dated--the early-evening cocktails, Frank's illicit lunch breaks with his secretary, the way Frank isn't averse to knocking April around when she speaks out of turn--and yet the quiet desperation at thwarted dreams reverberates as much now as it did years ago. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, this novel conveys, with brilliant erudition, the exacting cost of chasing the American dream. --Jane Morris, Amazon.co.uk
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