Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Posted on April 21, 2009

I am still working on my 50 Book Challenge, but the going is quite slow, and I am not sure I am going to make it.  I just finished novel #17, and I have until July to finish.  I would like to ask the internets permission to count rereading books I have read before.  For example, I have now read Twilight and New Moon three times each.  So, does that count as one book, respectively, or can I count that as 3?

Anyway, I just finished Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.

Frank and April Wheeler are a married couple raising two kids in 1950′s suburban Connecticut.  They are seemingly a perfect couple, but in reality they are both unfulfilled and desperately lonely.  Frank has a dead end and boring job in the same company his father worked at his entire life.  Frank took the job to support the inconveniently pregnant April, and “got stuck.”  April was an aspiring actress, who gave it up for the husband and the family and the boring life in the suburbs.  The novel opens with April trying to realize her dream as an actress by participating in a local theater production.  The show is a flop, and she begins to tailspin, reevaluating her life and the decisions she and Frank made after she got pregnant.  In their attempt to save their relationship, they come up with a scheme to move to Europe, but are thwarted with disastrous consequences.

I liked this novel, primarily for the eloquence of the prose and Yates ability to offer a snap shot of the social morays of this time period.   I also enjoyed the complexity of the relationships between the characters.  Nothing is black and white, no one is good or evil, and no one is either completely happy or miserable.  I was trying to describe the book to John, and he said, “Its a man hater book.”  And even though Frank can be quite the jerk, April is just as bad.  But they are also fascinating characters, which makes the novel an interesting read.  I give it three stars.