Children of divorced parents, sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes are observed over four decades, and grow into two very different women.Sarah is stable...
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Sep 19, 2011
Eric
rated it: 
I’m not sure what Yates was up to in two-thirds of The Easter Parade. He certainly wasn’t playing to his strength—that is, the deep, layered scene: the slow death of a party; the waning of an afternoon buzz; the polite prolongation of a tense visit; lives told in gesture; and dialogue so perfect you see speakers without description. Two of the novel’s three Parts flash by in what biographer Blake Bailey, I see, grandly dubs “summary narration” which, he goes on to plead, “serves the larger purp
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Jan 29, 2012
Jeanette
rated it: 
4.5 stars
Poor, poor Emmy! She's never understood one single thing in her entire life! :( Poor Emily. If only she could have learned. Hopping right into the sack will get you the man, sure. But it's better to find out first if he's even worth having. Sadly, I've known far too many women who were so much like Emily. And far too many men who were just like the dorks she wasted her life on.
Easter Parade is another dead-on perfect portrayal of mid-20th century middle-class More...
Poor, poor Emmy! She's never understood one single thing in her entire life! :( Poor Emily. If only she could have learned. Hopping right into the sack will get you the man, sure. But it's better to find out first if he's even worth having. Sadly, I've known far too many women who were so much like Emily. And far too many men who were just like the dorks she wasted her life on.
Easter Parade is another dead-on perfect portrayal of mid-20th century middle-class More...
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Dec 16, 2009
Tao
rated it: 
I like this book.
The last twenty pages made me feel very emotional. The novel is very tight. I like it. I like it more than Revolutionary Road. The Easter Parade is very sad, but then you look at the main character's life and you see that her life was not very sad, really, but much better objectively than most people's lives.
Everyone around her was fucked.
The last twenty pages made me feel very emotional. The novel is very tight. I like it. I like it more than Revolutionary Road. The Easter Parade is very sad, but then you look at the main character's life and you see that her life was not very sad, really, but much better objectively than most people's lives.
Everyone around her was fucked.
Jan 29, 2012
Michael
rated it:
It's been a few years since I've read "The Easter Parade," by Richard Yates. I read it first in college many years ago, then in my late 20s, and now in my mid-40s. This book simply gets better and better. Not only is the writing flawlessly rendered, the inevitable circumstances of sisters Emily and Sarah are presented with honesty, empathy and tremendous sensitivity by a master realist who knows exactly how alcoholic families live out their lives. What the TV show "Mad Men"
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Jan 29, 2012
~Sara~
rated it:
This was the first book I've read by Richard Yates and I have extremely mixed emotions after it. The portrayal of the characters lives is at times both brutal and heart-breaking and there are glimpses of people you know or things you've seen or experienced throughout the book that make it really hit home. It's a good thing it's not very long because, although it seems true to life, I found it was becoming too repetitive and morose for the storyline. I can only read so much gloom before becoming
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Mar 30, 2009
Becky
rated it:
"Human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience."
Alfred North Whitehead
"Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer
and then you find there is nothing in it."
James Gibbons Hunter
"Life is divided into the horrible and the m More...
Alfred North Whitehead
"Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer
and then you find there is nothing in it."
James Gibbons Hunter
"Life is divided into the horrible and the m More...
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Nov 01, 2011
Mad Dog
rated it:
This is my fave Yates book. Rings real true. Really moving, in a sad way.
The family in the book (the Grimes family) is like so many families. The continued lack of communication, the akwardness, the isolation: these problems are all there.
This book did go a little slow for me in the beginning, but the momentum does build and the poignancy increases. And the main character (Emily) is quite likeable. I have also read Rev Road and Good School by Yates, and I really enjoyed More...
The family in the book (the Grimes family) is like so many families. The continued lack of communication, the akwardness, the isolation: these problems are all there.
This book did go a little slow for me in the beginning, but the momentum does build and the poignancy increases. And the main character (Emily) is quite likeable. I have also read Rev Road and Good School by Yates, and I really enjoyed More...
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Jul 27, 2008
Waylonia
rated it:
Easter Parade is only the second Yates book I've read (after Revolutionary Road, an obvious classic), but it is more proof of his ability to craft meaningful, frequently painful stories with a pared-down prose style that is immediately readable and deceptively 'simple.' Following the lives of two sisters from childhood on up, it's not a happy tale--but then again Yates gives us fair warning of that right in the first sentence. It moves quicker and covers greater ground than Revolutionary Road--
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Apr 02, 2009
Kent
rated it: 
An engaging enough story, yet another tale of suburban malaise, with that sort of detached, clinical narrative style reviewers like to call "quietly poignant" and "unflinchingly honest". Good for a long train ride. If I lived in a country where long train rides were commonplace, I might read another of Richard Yates' novels. Since I don't, I'll probably just put "Revolutionary Road" on my netflix queue. Or not.
Nov 01, 2011
Abby
rated it:
I missed Richard Yates the first time around, in the 60s and 70s. Unfortunately, so did almost every one else. Despite critical acclaim – Revolutionary Road, his first and arguably greatest novel, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962 – Yates never achieved wide popularity. We have the recent movie of Revolutionary Road to thank for finally – long after Yates’s death in 1992 – landing the book on the best seller list and bringing his other works to our attention. [return][return]T
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Jan 10, 2012
Angie
rated it:
Richard Yates’ The Collected Stories and Revolutionary Road are two of my favorite books. Easter Parade does not quite meet the standard of those books, but does display the clarity and precision of Yates’ writing and his honest portrayal of deeply flawed and unhappy people. The Grimes’ sisters could not be more different on the surface. Sarah enters into an abusive marriage and becomes a mother at an early age. Emily goes to college, starts a career, and careens from one doomed love affair to
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Sep 12, 2011
Nikki
rated it:
I was really excited to read another book by Richard Yates, since Revolutionary Road is one of my all-time favorites. Sadly, I don't think this novel is nearly as good.
The first line is the novel tells you that the sisters, Sarah and Emily, won't have happy lives. Then the next 200 or so pages chronicles the next 40 years of their unhappiness. I sped through this in about two sittings, so it's pretty compelling, but at the end I felt like it was hollow. Their lives are bleak, truly More...
The first line is the novel tells you that the sisters, Sarah and Emily, won't have happy lives. Then the next 200 or so pages chronicles the next 40 years of their unhappiness. I sped through this in about two sittings, so it's pretty compelling, but at the end I felt like it was hollow. Their lives are bleak, truly More...
Jul 28, 2011
Yates' novels are masterfully deceptive. You start out reading what seems like a typical story of a typical family -- maybe some of the characters are quirky, yes, but all families are like that. Then, as you read on, cracks start to appear, and what you thought was normal is anything but. The Easter Parade is about a family of three: a mother and two daughters. The mother is over dramatic, the older sister is obedient and overly compliant, but the younger sister Emily seems to have it together
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May 16, 2011
Laala
rated it:
“There were worse things in the world than being alone.” — Richard Yates, The Easter Parade
I’ve been wanting to read Yates quite a while. I was in a bookstore trying to chose between his books, and I picked up The Easter Parade. I was intrigued. I’d wanted to read Revolutionary Road, but I had recently seen the movie and I wanted to shake it out of my head before I read the book. So The Easter Parade it was.
The novel follows two sisters, Emily and Sarah, throughout their liv More...
I’ve been wanting to read Yates quite a while. I was in a bookstore trying to chose between his books, and I picked up The Easter Parade. I was intrigued. I’d wanted to read Revolutionary Road, but I had recently seen the movie and I wanted to shake it out of my head before I read the book. So The Easter Parade it was.
The novel follows two sisters, Emily and Sarah, throughout their liv More...
Dec 04, 2010
Ann
rated it:
This is one of those rare paradoxical finds : a book about a depressing subject that nevertheless leaves you invigorated and eager to read more by the same author. It's the story of two sisters in New York, Sarah and Emily, whose lives are followed from the 40s through the 70s. In a nutshell: it's a story of broken dreams, unfulfilled wishes and wasted lives. Sarah's marriage to a young Englishman does not bring her an association with a wealthy, classy family, as she'd hoped, but instead dooms
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Sep 27, 2010
Teresa
rated it:
Sarah and Emily Grimes s parents divorced when they were young, and according to the narrator, the divorce is where their trouble began. Sarah marries young, has three sons, and makes a few abortive attempts at writing about her family. Emily goes to college, has a career in writing and editing trade and advertising copy that merely pays the bills, goes through one man after another, and makes a few abortive attempts at writing about her own experiences. Both women seem to stand for the two str
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Jul 30, 2010
Antonia
rated it:
Easter Parade is not a happy story about happy families. Richard Yates captures the sad decline of alcoholism and delusion better than anyone I’ve read in ages. Easter Parade is the tale of two sisters, Emily and Sarah as watch their mother descend into mental illness and alcoholism. Both sisters suffer in different ways while their mother drinks herself into a psyche ward. Emily floats from man to man with no understanding of how to progress in life without disappearing into the next man. Wit
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Apr 09, 2009
Katherine
rated it:
I picked this up because it's by Richard Yates, which means it would be a sordid yet tender little tale of mid-century decline told in precise and never-grandiose prose, and because I thought the title (metaphorical double meaning: "The Resurrection Parade") was very cool.
At first, I felt uncertain about The Easter Parade because there seemed to be this underlying assumption that if their vacillating, favorite-playing dad and social-climbing mom had not gotten divorced, the More...
At first, I felt uncertain about The Easter Parade because there seemed to be this underlying assumption that if their vacillating, favorite-playing dad and social-climbing mom had not gotten divorced, the More...
May 13, 2009
Cecily
rated it:
Hurt oozes from every page of this story, more explicitly than in much of Revolutionary Road, although the characters are generally somewhat flimsier.
This is the story of two sisters who were 9 and 5 when their parents split up in 1930, after which they move around New York environs with their mother at regular intervals, always chasing “flair”, but without the means to achieve it. Sarah, the older one, grows up to lead a conventional life (early marriage and children, long term dome More...
This is the story of two sisters who were 9 and 5 when their parents split up in 1930, after which they move around New York environs with their mother at regular intervals, always chasing “flair”, but without the means to achieve it. Sarah, the older one, grows up to lead a conventional life (early marriage and children, long term dome More...
Oct 17, 2011
Paula
rated it:
This is the first book I have read by Richard Yates and it was a well written book. Richard Yates writes characters brilliantly and without sounding too sexist, it was hard to believe a man had written the book because the dialogue between the sisters is so realistic.
The book is very sad and told in a very straightforward manner, Sarah, the eldest sister grows up and gets married, she loses her confidence and produces her 'happy face' to hide what is happening within her marriage wh More...
The book is very sad and told in a very straightforward manner, Sarah, the eldest sister grows up and gets married, she loses her confidence and produces her 'happy face' to hide what is happening within her marriage wh More...
Mar 14, 2011
Laurel-Rain
rated it:
From the moment of their parents' divorce, when they were nine and five years old, Sarah and Emily Grimes move forward to very different kinds of lives, spanning decades: from 1930 to the 1970s, we experience how the significance of their tarnished childhoods informed their destinies.
Over the years, their lives diverged, with Sarah married to her "charming" romantic partner, Tony Wilson, while Emily finished college at Barnard and began the first of a series of positions. H More...
Over the years, their lives diverged, with Sarah married to her "charming" romantic partner, Tony Wilson, while Emily finished college at Barnard and began the first of a series of positions. H More...
Jan 05, 2010
Saliotthomas
rated it:
It might become an habit but i started the years with Yates again and again was caught by is intimate knowlegde of humain shortcomings.
No what really strikes me is the strong tigh betwin the two books, it feel like to different stories in a major one. A bit like La comedie humaine of Balzac, different books but so close together that they are part of a bigger picture of all different aspects of humain soul.
Sarah and Emilie could very well be cousins of the Wheelers or neighbourgs at More...
No what really strikes me is the strong tigh betwin the two books, it feel like to different stories in a major one. A bit like La comedie humaine of Balzac, different books but so close together that they are part of a bigger picture of all different aspects of humain soul.
Sarah and Emilie could very well be cousins of the Wheelers or neighbourgs at More...
Sep 07, 2010
Sara
rated it:
“Anyone could be a flashy irresponsible reporter…but the man who wrote the headlines… who read through all of the complexities of daily news to pick out salient points and who then summed everything up in a few well chosen words artfully composed to fit a limited space, there was a consummate journalist.”
When Richard Yates wrote the opening lines of Easter Parade, he was describing a young girl’s attempt to inflate her father’s lowly job as copyboy at a reactionary tabloid. Who knew he was More...
When Richard Yates wrote the opening lines of Easter Parade, he was describing a young girl’s attempt to inflate her father’s lowly job as copyboy at a reactionary tabloid. Who knew he was More...
Dec 26, 2011
Teemu
rated it:
Yates writes well but The Easter Parade seemed rushed, twenty years was far too long period to follow the characters - it just made the narrative unfocused as it seemed the push through all the developments without concentrating on any particular moment. I sincerely believe novels are at the best when concentrating on a relatively short period of time.
I also feel that the novel didn't answer the promise I gave on the very first sentence: I didn't feel the lives of the sisters were t More...
I also feel that the novel didn't answer the promise I gave on the very first sentence: I didn't feel the lives of the sisters were t More...
Jul 07, 2011
Allan
rated it:
It's dangerous to read The Easter Parade past a certain age, after accumulating a certain quantity of disappointments in circumstances and self. Is it cruelty or uncontainable genius that propels Yates to present life's ultimate and insurmountable frustrations unfolding with the thick, sweet, inevitable smoothness of an ice-cream soda being sucked through a fat straw? The effortlessly decoded dialogue is precise and distinct to each doomed and deluded character. The illusory comforts of pride an
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Jul 10, 2011
Owen
rated it:
Spoilers of sorts....
An enjoyable if ultimately quite disheartening read. The lives of the two sisters are expertly drawn and throughout he contrasts their natures and choices well to give an overview of the, rather limited, options available for women at that point in time, until you hit a turning point when you realise that a bond between them has been broken and that ultimately neither one will find any kind of answer or satisfaction. Or maybe just that they foun More...
An enjoyable if ultimately quite disheartening read. The lives of the two sisters are expertly drawn and throughout he contrasts their natures and choices well to give an overview of the, rather limited, options available for women at that point in time, until you hit a turning point when you realise that a bond between them has been broken and that ultimately neither one will find any kind of answer or satisfaction. Or maybe just that they foun More...
Feb 03, 2010
Katie
rated it:
In 5 words or less: bleak, honest, lonely, and depressing.
I would like to debate anyone who really believes there is even the tiniest ray of hope offered in this one. As I say this, I can actually hear my high school English teacher chiding me, "but _____ represents redemption and a chance at renewal...and the title, it's right there in the title!" (Or the people that say this book is funny? What? Maybe kind of absurd in the way truly real things are.) Still, I'm not g More...
I would like to debate anyone who really believes there is even the tiniest ray of hope offered in this one. As I say this, I can actually hear my high school English teacher chiding me, "but _____ represents redemption and a chance at renewal...and the title, it's right there in the title!" (Or the people that say this book is funny? What? Maybe kind of absurd in the way truly real things are.) Still, I'm not g More...
Nov 04, 2009
Lawrence A
rated it:
I was disappointed in this novel. Yates doesn't endow his two female protagonists with much depth, and is content to have their inner lives, as it were, revolve around whatever men are in their lives at any given time. Sarah, the older sister, is stuck with a wife-beater, and develops what we would now call codependency. Emily, the younger sister and the focus of the novel, is supposedly the "free spirit" of the two, yet she defines herself by her serial monogamous relationships she
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Aug 14, 2011
Lindsay
rated it:
"And she said 'Emmy doesn't care what anybody thinks. She's her on person and she goes her own way."
Tragic yet poignant, Yates captures the lives of two sisters growing up in the 1930s and chronicles their adulthood in the 70s. Yates demonstrates how an unstable childhood impacts individuals as adults through the story of sisters Sarah and Emily. While both daughters were raised under the same conditions, their adult lives are juxtaposed. Sarah conventionally marries you More...
Tragic yet poignant, Yates captures the lives of two sisters growing up in the 1930s and chronicles their adulthood in the 70s. Yates demonstrates how an unstable childhood impacts individuals as adults through the story of sisters Sarah and Emily. While both daughters were raised under the same conditions, their adult lives are juxtaposed. Sarah conventionally marries you More...
