Revolutionary Road (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

Yates, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307454789 ISBN 13: 9780307454782

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2008

Synopsis

The devastating effects of work, adultery, rebellion, and self-deception slowly destroy the once successful marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, a suburban American couple. Reissue. (A DreamWorks film, directed by Sam Mendes, releasing December 2008, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, David Harbour, Michael Shannon, & Zoe Kazan). (General Fiction)

About this title

Review

Originally published in 1961 to great critical acclaim, Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road subsequently fell into obscurity in the UK, only to be rediscovered in a new edition published in 2001. Its rejuvenation 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 or happy in their relationships or careers. Frank is mired in a well-paid 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. However, as their relationship deteriorates into an endless cycle of squabbling, jealousy and recriminations, their trip and their dreams of self-fulfilment 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 now 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 all seem to belong to a different world--and yet the quiet desperation at thwarted dreams reverberates as much now as it did 40 years ago. Like F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, this novel conveys, with brilliant erudition, the poverty at the soul of many wealthy Americans and the exacting cost of chasing the American Dream. --Jane Morris

Review

'It's worth revisiting Yates's original 1961 novel...an author only now receiving just acclaim'

'The book is oppressively grim and very funny, in a cruel almost gloating way'

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0307454789
• ISBN 13: 9780307454782
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 463