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| Revolutionary Road | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Yates
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £3.39
You Save: £4.60 (58%)
New (29) from £3.39
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 3533
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0099518627
EAN: 9780099518624
ASIN: 0099518627
Publication Date: December 13, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: New
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| Customer Reviews:
Understand the modern world August 6, 2008
If you want to get an insight into the break down of family life and the obsession with celebrity and appearance in the post modern world then look no further. The need to be different in the ridiculous stylised modern world of work is covered with great insight. Love and the lust underneath it for what we don't have are there too. Everyone might be flawed in some way but don't worry about that as it's a great read from start to finish.
Stifled by mediocrity July 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Revolutionary Road" is a brilliantly written novel of the American Dream gone bad. It tells the story of a bright young couple whose marriage, personalities and eventually more are stifled and destroyed by the happy medium of society's dictates. On the surface, April and Frank appear to be a 1950s model of perfection with their beautiful house, their beautiful kids, their beautiful car. But underneath, frustration, alienation and despair begin to eat away eventually causing the surface to crumble away and be revealed for what it was.
The writing is superb: a tension makes every sentence seem 3-D. You know that no happy ending awaits April and Frank but you are compelled to read on and accompany them to certain destruction. The 1950s setting is beautifully conveyed, from Frank's IBM-like corporation to the seedy dive with the has-been drummer.
The strength of "Revolutionary Road" lies also with the identification potential of the reader. Which bright young person has not imagined themself superior to the rest and surely destined for something greater than smug suburbia? Which corporate employee has not imagined that their dreary job is "only for the interim" before their real potential is discovered? And I'm sure I'm not the only middle-aged reader to think "there, but for the grace of God....."
How come I only just heard about this fantastic book? June 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
How come I only just heard about this fantastic book? Set in 1950s suburban Connecticut, it tells the story of the less than idyllic relationship of Frank and April Wheeler. Although an onlooker may see them as an ideal couple in an ideal situation they both have layers and layers of dissatisfaction which come to the surface as their marriage crumbles.
The book was written in 1961 and seems to encapsulate all that we have come to associate with the previous decade. April appears willing to give up any pretence of a career to look after house and children while Frank goes each day to his "boring" office job (but he manages to find time for an affair with a secretary). Everyone drinks and smokes to excess - even in pregnancy. Frank's boss declares electronic computers to be the coming thing.....
Although both Frank and his neighbour Shep sometimes reflect on their time in the army during the war very little of the wider outside world creeps into the empty surburban world of Frank and April and their small circle of acquaintances. April comes up with a plan to move the family to France believing this will give Frank a fresh impetus to "find himself" but from the start you wonder if this will never happen.
Revolutionary Road is powerfully written and draws you into the lives of the Wheelers and their neighbours the Campbells and the Givings. It has some darkly comic moments and many flashes of brilliance. Yes, an American classic.
Did the creators of Mad Men (US TV series) get some of their inspiration from this book?
The Pain of Being 29 June 8, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Expectations. This book is about fulfilling your own expectations and not being overwhelmed by bourgeois reality. Yates is the perfect antidote to American positive thinking. He's an American Philip Larkin or Evelyn Waugh mixed in with a bit of Tolstoyan revulsion at the banality and sadness of life.
He's a novelist for writers, I think. His preoccupation with fulfilling talent, doing something exceptional with your life, the desire to escape convention and drudgery is not going to have a wide appeal. His bitterness has a certain Ivy League quality to it. I must admit I kept saying to myself while reading it, life isn't that bad.
Yates manages to wallow in the bad smells, personal failings, corrupt longings, shameful secrets, interpersonal cruelty and huge disappointments of life. Yates illuminates every dark and mouldy corner of snobbery, insensitivity, anger, pain, selfishness, lust, resentment and ingratitude in our social relations. No wonder he struggled to win respect and praise in his lifetime.
Then again. 29 was by far the worst year of my life. One of my dinner party speeches is about how these days, if a person is single, unhappy in their job and living in a place they don't like, something horrible usually happens as 30 looms, because you're just so terrified of what you've got yourself into, and you're old enough to realise just how difficult it is to get out of a bad situation. It seems that it's not just single people who have the problem, married people also have to re-evaluate.
I read this book in Paris, which had a certain piquancy given that the two main characters aspire to move to Paris. Being 39 this year, I can appreciate the terror of life evoked by Yates. He does it so beautifully and with such sublime humour. But things can get better in your thirties. As much as anything the book is a satire on the destructive self-absorbtion and stupidity of the characters.
Look out for the film with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio coming in December 2008.
Quite simply, one of the best American novels of the 20th century May 16, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
An astoundingly well told tale of a couple trying to live happy lives in 50s America. Devastatingly accurate its portrayals of vanity, manhood and ambition as well as deceit, depression and the absurd faces we put on situations attributed to being part of 'normal life'. This is one of the best, most potent American books I've read and it's not hard to see why it was regarded as a classic from the moment it was published.
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