Revolutionary Road

published	April 25th 2000 by Vintage
first published	1961
binding	Paperback
isbn	0375708448 (isbn13: 9780375708442)
ebook
pages	368
literary awards	1962 National Book Award finalist
description	The rediscovery and rejuvenation of Richard Yates's 1961 novel Revolutionary Road is due in large part to its continuing emotional and moral re...more [close] 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 [close]
date added	05-03-07 edit book

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Eric rated it:

07/07/08

bookshelves: favorites

Read in June, 2008

I let out a whoop of laughter on about page 180, when I finally figured Frank Wheeler out. You see, Frank spent most of his life a scattered, bashful schmuck. Then after WWII, as a Columbia student and Village-dweller, he started getting laid all the time, thanks to a theatrically brooding pseudo-intellectual schtick. Nevermind that Frank is essentially a glib blowhard, talented in no exceptional way (he's one of those tiresome people who whine about Conformity as if America invented it, threate...more I let out a whoop of laughter on about page 180, when I finally figured Frank Wheeler out. You see, Frank spent most of his life a scattered, bashful schmuck. Then after WWII, as a Columbia student and Village-dweller, he started getting laid all the time, thanks to a theatrically brooding pseudo-intellectual schtick. Nevermind that Frank is essentially a glib blowhard, talented in no exceptional way (he's one of those tiresome people who whine about Conformity as if America invented it, threaten expatriation, etc.), but the sexual success of his hip, disaffected persona was the only success or strength he has ever really known, and so it becomes the core around which he wraps his entire being and identity. That's fine, we all need illusions, and if it gets you laid, even better--but the hitch is that April, his wife and the last of his conquests, and the woman with whom he now lives in the suburbs, actually half-believes him, thinks that he's a noble soul who needs the rarefied air of foreign capitals in order to flower. This is hilarious because Frank is nothing if not the standard guy, le homme moyen sensuel: his dissatisfaction with his life, which he pretentiously blames on the conformity and boredom of 1950s America, is actually pretty well mollified once he gets a promotion at work and starts screwing a secretary; the idea of moving to Paris the better to become a 'nicotine-stained, Jean-Paul Sartre kinda guy' vanishes once he starts having more sex; he affects a snooty disdain for his job, but he's actually quite good at it, and, in heartbreaking scene toward the end, when it's all too, too late, demonstrates that he kind of likes it.

But getting back to my whoop of laughter. That laughter didn't diminish my esteem for the novel--regardless of his characters, Yates is a godlike stylist--but for a while there I felt it played more as a macabre farce than as a Tragic Laying Bare Of The Hollowness Of The American Dream. Then the tragic gravity of the characters came rushing back in chapter 7 of part 3, when the narration switches to April's point of view, and Yates starts hitting you where the last pages of 'The Great Gatsby' hit you. I ended up with more compassion for Frank, especially as I began to see that his pose of superiority rises, at least partly, out of a desperate fear of ending up like his wilted, used-up working stiff of a father. Frank and April were drifting, lonely people who initially thought that one another looked like the kind of person (the 'golden' boy, the 'really first rate girl') who could whirl their lives into effortlessness and perfection and a final salvation from lifelong feelings of dread and inadequacy...just as everyone else in the book thinks that the Wheelers LOOK LIKE that golden couple with the world at its feet, and all problems solved. Stendahl said 'beauty is the promise of happiness.' That's it, merely 'the promise.' Yates is so eloquent on how easy (and necessary) it is to theatricalize our lives. He knows all the little gestures and poses with which we briefly and delusionally elevate ugly, flawed creatures into romantic figures.

(Oh, and while I hate to bash a movie I haven't seen: it will be, at best, a lame adaptation, and at worst, a travesty and repudiation of the book. I don't think the director of 'American Beauty' and the principal leads of 'Titanic' are really up to Yates and his crushing vision.)...less

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David rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

11/16/07

Read in October, 2007

Revolutionary Road is a masterpiece of a genre that’s largely considered played out—the novel of suburban malaise. It’s a social novel about The Way We Live Now, only in this case Now is over 40 years ago and Yates’ take on the plight of the poor souls marooned in corporate/suburban America has long since been digested and superseded. It still persists to some degree—in films like American Beauty, novels such as Tom Perotta’s Little Children, and the brilliant TV show Weeds. But, Ame...more Revolutionary Road is a masterpiece of a genre that’s largely considered played out—the novel of suburban malaise. It’s a social novel about The Way We Live Now, only in this case Now is over 40 years ago and Yates’ take on the plight of the poor souls marooned in corporate/suburban America has long since been digested and superseded. It still persists to some degree—in films like American Beauty, novels such as Tom Perotta’s Little Children, and the brilliant TV show Weeds. But, American Beauty aside, contemporary takes on suburbia tend to be much less tragic and portentous.

Frank and April Wheeler, Yates 20-30-something protagonists are, in their own misguided way, dissidents struggling against certain stereotypically oppressive aspects of American life in the 50’s: conformity; the tedium and banality of life in the suburbs and the mid-century corporate workplace (they live in Connecticut, Frank works in New York); in April’s case, against a life of homemaking and childrearing. The problem is they don’t seem to have very good intellectual resources for waging the struggle. The practical, material resources are probably there—they are well educated (at least Frank is), intelligent, they make a good impression, while not rich they are far from destitute. But they are hampered by all kinds of romantic illusions, illusions that keep them from coming up with a plausible escape plan, or making the most of the hand they are dealt. They are tormented by the idea that they are not living up to their best selves (and this is true) but they have utterly self-deluding notions about what their best selves are or how to bring them into being. They are so afraid of being corrupted by their environment that they hold themselves aloof from the life around them. Their aversion is largely aesthetic, but the pop psychological and sociological theories they use to explain to themselves why they are alienated are inadequate to the task. They want to lead lives of significance, but the best they can do is to concoct a vague and implausible scheme of moving to France, where the plan is for April to work as a secretary while Frank sits around the apartment trying to figure out what to do with himself. I mean, if they want to do something worthwhile with their lives, Frank could become a teacher, or, at the other end of the scale, go to work for the kind of high-powered advertising firm portrayed in Mad Men (he graduated Columbia and has a way with words). April could have, at the very least, volunteered to work at the NAACP.

Yates is an extremely accomplished prose stylist. He’s a master of the vivid, transparent prose style that is the gold standard for writers of realistic fiction. He nails the details of life among the white middle class in the mid-to-late 50’s, while at the same time painting it as a more complicated and conflicted time than popular stereotypes would have you believe. He has an extraordinary ability to make you feel like you are deep inside the consciousness of his characters while at the same time watching them from a great distance. And the central dilemma his characters face—how to live a worthwhile life in a world that often conspires against it—is not one that will go out of fashion any time soon.

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Frederick rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

08/20/08

Read in August, 2008

I just finished this two days ago. I'm going to leave intact what I wrote before finishing the book, but I'll add that REVOLUTIONARY ROAD seems to me to have more in common with Ford Maddox Ford's THE GOOD SOLDIER than with the works of Cheever, Updike or, say, John O'Hara. While the setting is post-Second-World-War America, there is a classicism to REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. As a tale-end Baby Boomer, I can say the characters in this book remind me very much of the World War Two vets in the suburb whe...more I just finished this two days ago. I'm going to leave intact what I wrote before finishing the book, but I'll add that REVOLUTIONARY ROAD seems to me to have more in common with Ford Maddox Ford's THE GOOD SOLDIER than with the works of Cheever, Updike or, say, John O'Hara. While the setting is post-Second-World-War America, there is a classicism to REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. As a tale-end Baby Boomer, I can say the characters in this book remind me very much of the World War Two vets in the suburb where I grew up. This novel is very accurate. But Yates is, somehow, not the kind of writer I fall in love with. While I even accept he was like his characters (and I have no idea whether he was or not), I don't sense in him a crying need to write about them, and that need is what marks Fitzgerald, Cheever or O'Hara. Yates is a virtuoso, but he doesn't have literary vices. (An author's excesses are almost invariably what make me remember the author.) Fitzgerald had the vice of self-pity. It comes through on every page. O'Hara has a mean streak. Updike has effusiveness. Richard Yates, who, according to Richard Ford in his informative introduction, felt he'd written his best book (which is this book) first, seems to have known exactly what he was doing. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is a very thorough study of what happened to the World War Two generation after the war. It's serious, suspenseful, frightening and poetic. There is one moment employing humor to such surprising effect that I have to call this great. And yet: Fitzgerald had glitter, Updike has sheen, O'Hara had drive and Cheever gave the sense of sharing a secret. I don't think REVOLUTIONARY ROAD lacks these qualities. But its perfection does not endear it to me. It will endure, of course. The forthcoming movie will make the book sell better in five weeks than it has in five decades. (And I suspect the movie will be extremely entertaining.) Yates's book is deep and deserves a wide audience. But, perhaps, in writing a novel which demonstrates a point (the point here being that people who are not assertive will fall prey to aggression), Yates sacrifices the friendship a writer owes the reader. I'll note, of course, that Shakespeare wrote MEASURE FOR MEASURE to demonstrate a point, and REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is on a level with MEASURE FOR MEASURE. I mean this. HERE'S WHAT I WROTE AS I WAS STARTING THE BOOK: I just started reading this. The fact that Richard Ford wrote an introduction to this edition (Second Vintage Contemporaries Edition, 2000) helped convince me. I've run across references to this book for years in various book reviews and essays, so I thought it was time I gave it a try. After I read a chapter, I checked out stuff on REVOLUTIONARY ROAD on the net and discovered that Sam Mendes has just finished directing a movie version. It's coming out in December, 2008 in Australia, accordijng to IMDB. Hope it comes out here in the US, too. I think it will, given that it has Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet. Here's the link to the IMDB entry:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt09...
I'm pretty sure Richard Yates was the author who my Creative Writing instructor in college wanted us all to see one night. I was too hungover to go. I'm also pretty sure it was Roy Orbison I missed when I was too hungover to see a rock legend who was performing on campus one night.
Yes, there are regrets one doesn't get over.
...less

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Paul rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

08/12/08

Read in August, 2008

For some reason I'm always perplexed and double-disappointed when an artist that I admire greatly extols some piece of art, and then I don't love it too. Like when I read Hitchhiker's Guide because I heard Radiohead were fans. In his introduction to Revolutionary Road, Richard Ford describes it as basically a book that everyone should have already read, it being so remarkable, etc. etc. And while there were definitely aspects of this novel that I really enjoyed -- Yates' style in g...more For some reason I'm always perplexed and double-disappointed when an artist that I admire greatly extols some piece of art, and then I don't love it too. Like when I read Hitchhiker's Guide because I heard Radiohead were fans. In his introduction to Revolutionary Road, Richard Ford describes it as basically a book that everyone should have already read, it being so remarkable, etc. etc. And while there were definitely aspects of this novel that I really enjoyed -- Yates' style in general, as well as his sheer ability to write, were, I thought, great -- but then certain things really put me off. For one, a lot of his dialogue rang false to me. There were a lot of windy, rehearsed-sounding monologues that didn't seem natural. Here's a short example:

"I thought we'd just have the plain tea today. I hope you don't mind. The point is, if we fill up now we won't be hungry for dinner, and we'll be having a very early dinner you see because I'm expected over at the Wheelers' at eight. Rather awkward timing all around, I'm afraid."

There are a ton of those 'you see's and 'Oh, well's and 'you know's which are meant to add realism to dialogue where here they just seem stiff and rehearsed.

The Wheelers' story is quite compelling, and it annoyed me when Yates shifted perspective to that of a friend or neighbor, like he was trying to add depth to the novel without delving any further into Frank or April. I didn't really care about the other characters. Everything comes together in the end, and every character plays a role, but I think it would have been a stronger novel had he decided to approach the other characters from the Wheelers' perspective rather than constantly shifting. Maybe I just like a single POV in a novel, or maybe it's too short a book to handle all that POV flip-flopping.

There are also instances where the way Yates went about offering those other characters' perspectives was distractingly unnatural. At the end of the novel, when the climax has just happened and he's about to reveal it to the reader, he writes "[The Wheelers' neighbor Milly] always said afterwards that . . . " and that 'always said afterwards' comes off as really out of place.

The other side of the coin is yeah, the guy is a great writer and the story itself is wonderful, if really sad. It's very funny at parts, too. On that much I agree with Richard Ford. The picture of a couple constantly trying to convince themselves of their superiority to their pathetic peers while slowly realizing that they too are just empty suburbanites going nowhere is tragic and well painted. But the novel is fundamentally flawed, in my opinion. The last sentence is really disappointing, too. I kept hoping it would redeem itself, and then it went and ended on a totally weak note. Boo.

Yates said that none of his books ever topped this one, but I'll read some more of his stuff eventually. See if it was just this novel that's flawed....less

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Jason rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

08/03/07

bookshelves: favorites

recommends it for: fans of 20th Century American fiction

Although a 1961 novel about a young couple that departs Manhattan for the Connecticut suburbs -- reminding one on its face, maybe, of numerous short stories of John Cheever (and told with the same keen sense observation) and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (with which it shares an acerbic humor) -- Revolutionary Road has surprising contemporary resonance. Many readers will find they are not unlike, or they know people not unlike, Yates' protagonists Frank and April Wheeler. People like, f...more Although a 1961 novel about a young couple that departs Manhattan for the Connecticut suburbs -- reminding one on its face, maybe, of numerous short stories of John Cheever (and told with the same keen sense observation) and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (with which it shares an acerbic humor) -- Revolutionary Road has surprising contemporary resonance. Many readers will find they are not unlike, or they know people not unlike, Yates' protagonists Frank and April Wheeler. People like, for instance, the following: the lawyer who wants to be a novelist; the bartender who wants to be an actress; the consultant who wants to be a food critic; the advertising associate who wants to be an artist; the mother who dreads a life in the home.

In Revolutionary Road, as in life, two questions must be asked of such individuals. In no particular order: (1) are they selling short their dreams of being something, someone else; and (2) are their dreams the pie-in-the-sky fantasies of dreamers who couldn't cut it if they tried?

Yates addresses both in the story of Frank Wheeler -- a businessman plodding along in run-of-the-mill Manhattan skyscraper territory -- and April Wheeler -- a housewife who once thought she could be, and still wonders whether she could have been, an actress. Together, the couple strike out, but not without hesitation, for the 'burbs -- assuming that their Manhattan "sophistication" will make them "better" than their Connecticut neighbors, and that settling for a grassy pied-à-terre will spark an already faltering marriage.

The Wheelers were deeply unsatisfied with their lots in life, and with each other, before they moved to Connecticut. The move changes little. Individually, they still feel something is missing. Frank's dreams of success in business are going nowhere. April daydreams at home, with the help of more than a little liquor, about opportunities she feels she left behind in Manhattan. Pipe dreams for both? Or attainable dreams left to the wayside by stagnation and discontent? Yates suggests the possibility of either, in a narrative that's both sympathetic toward the emptiness in the Wheelers lives and, with plentiful dark humor, critical of the lives they've made for themselves and their illusions of the lives to which they believe they're entitled.

Multiple plot turns shouldn't be given away, save to say characters in a novel, like people in life, who are down, often look to various external things as means of solace. And, in a story that shapes up like this, there's going to be some tragedy along the way.

Many readers will identify with the characters. Perhaps in a discomfiting way. But it keeps the reader tuned in. As does Yates' sharp writing and calculatedly paced storytelling. Revolutionary Road is one of the more remarkable achievements in 20th Century American fiction.
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Leigh rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

10/14/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: cynics

I read this book on the recommendation of my co-worker.

This is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, two Connecticut suburbanites going about their day-to-day lives without joy. Frank works, but calls his job "the dullest in the world". April had visions of being a New York actress when she was a young woman, but she sets these aspirations aside after a community theatre production goes embarrassingly wrong. They have two children, April having wanted to abort her pregnancy but ul...more I read this book on the recommendation of my co-worker.

This is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, two Connecticut suburbanites going about their day-to-day lives without joy. Frank works, but calls his job "the dullest in the world". April had visions of being a New York actress when she was a young woman, but she sets these aspirations aside after a community theatre production goes embarrassingly wrong. They have two children, April having wanted to abort her pregnancy but ultimately giving in to Frank's desire to have the children (or maybe just his sense of what his life should be).

When April gets pregnant for a third time, it disrupts their plans to run away and start a new life in Europe. This disruption sends their marriage deeper into the turmoil they were hoping to escape. April again wants to abort, and believes she can safely terminate the pregnancy at the end of the first trimester, which gives Frank three months to change her mind. In these three months we witness a man who can't decide who or what he wants to be when he grows up, but nevertheless will resort to anything to "win" this argument with his wife. We see a woman who does not love her husband. We see a couple falling apart but keeping semblances up for their neighbors and friends, even though they believe these very people to be socially inferior to themselves.

It's an ugly portrait of marriage and of suburban America. It's grim and hopeless. And it never gets better.

This book has received critical acclaim. I agree with the reviews that the writing is quite strong. Yates has a way of describing ordinary situations and people that betray their innermost fears and realities.

But I really didn't enjoy reading this book.

Maybe it was because I'm just not that hopeless of a person. I can find redeeming features of most people, places, and situations. I agree that none of us is as happy as we make ourselves out to be, but that doesn't mean there's no happiness to be found anywhere. There's something to be said for putting up the facade of happiness just to get us through the doldrums of our lives until true happiness returns. So I just wasn't that sympathetic to these folks. If anyone is as unhappy as our protagonists in this book, I'd recommend doing something to make it better. Get therapy. Change locations. Divorce. Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'.

Would I recommend this book? Yes if you're one of those people who loves The Great Gatsby. No if you're like me and dislike books where all of the characters are depressing and/or annoying and where life just gets worse and worse for them....less

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Alison rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

07/16/07

bookshelves: alltime100novel, classics

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: suburbanites, thirtysomethings, Kate & Leo fans

I was hoping this book was going to deliver...and it really did. This is the story of Frank and April Wheeler. They live in small-town Connecticut with their two children, and they are approaching the age of 30. Frank commutes into the city to his "uninteresing" office job (think "The Office" without the humor). April and Frank seem to have woken up one morning to lives they didn't plan for--the small house in the suburbs; the (gasp) nonintellectual neighbors they pretend...more

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Sam rated it:

05/04/08

bookshelves: drama-angst

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: Everyone

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

If any book I've ever read is the embodiment of the phrase "lives of quiet desperation," this one is it. Except for one thing: none of the characters is really quiet. They all talk. And talk. And talk. And talk. They talk to mask their underlying deperation and feelings of inadequacies. They talk to stave off the silence that terrifies them. They talk just to hear their own voices.

The main characters are Frank and April Wheeler, a young, newly-suburban couple with delusions...more

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Tom rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

02/18/08

Read in November, 2007

A magnificent work of art that said everything there was to say about suburban malaise in 1961. Or so I speculate, having not read all that much about suburban malaise. I look forward to the film adaptation this year.

"Bright visions came to haunt him of a world that could and should have been his, a world of intellect and sensibility that now lay forever mixed in his mind with 'the East.' In the East, he then believed, a man went to college not for vocational training but in discipline...more

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brook rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

08/01/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: suburbanites

loved it. i finished it yesterday and i can't stop thinking about it.

the story itself, strangely enough, reminded me of a 1950's, family-centric fight club...except way more depressing. there was a lot of talk about fighting the prescribed notions of what it means to be married and have children, but not a lot of action (that's the depressing part) - until the end, that is. the last few chapters were, word for word, perfect. i kept re-reading the last paragraphs of the last chapter from ...more

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Almira rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

06/18/08

recommended to Almira by: Michelle Richmond
recommends it for: anyone who enjoys thoughtfully written literature, but beware this is not a happy book

This book was suggested to me by the author of Year of Fog, Michelle Richmond.

Generally, I do not read introductions, I want to get right to the book, but the intro was by Richard Ford, a favorite author, and so I plowed through the intro...... Richard states "Yates once remarked to an interviewer that he felt he had written too little in his life, and that his was the misfortune to have written his best book first." Well, be that as it may, Revolutionary Road is a book with many...more

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Amy rated it:

07/26/07

Read in July, 2007

This book was written in the early 1960s and is a harsh critique of 1950s idealism. It follows the relationship and lives of a young couple named Frank and April Wheeler who have the perfect little nuclear family in the suburbs. The characters themselves spout off rhetoric about the pedestrian quality of such a life, but are always noting that they are so much better than their peers , supposedly because they don't buy into the whole "white-picket-fence American dream" (all though, in ...more

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Loren rated it:

(review of isbn 0679721916)

05/14/08

Read in May, 2008

recommends it for: Easily deflated people

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Elissa rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

03/20/08

bookshelves: march-2008

Ode to the anti-suburbian novel! It was beautifully written with a dash of irony; the Wheelers are living the American Dream yet are hating it and each other. The other characters of the novel envy their life, their home, their family, and their intellect and yet the Wheelers are only good at propping together a disintegrating marriage in an unriching life. Frank Wheeler especially strikes me as an interesting character, constantly berating the ills of the suburban life describing it as "...more

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Jackie rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

03/15/08

Read in March, 2008

Many reviewers have mentioned this book deserves to be an American classic. I can see why. It's a well written, highly developed character study of a 30-year old man who ironically lives his life working in an uninteresting job in New York City and commutes home to his beautiful wife and family in the Connecticut suburbs. His life is ironic because he acknowledges it as so--he takes the uninteresting job precisely because his dad worked for the same company, he takes a promotion precisely becaus...more

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Lori rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

08/29/07

Read in August, 2007

Reading this book was a new experience for me. I disliked every character except the children, the premise wasn't particularly interesting, and the theme was tired. And yet I kept reading, realizing halfway through that it was because Richard yates is such an incredible writer. I finally understand writing skill. A young couple moves from the city to the country and spend their days going through the motions and spend their evenings getting completely soused and complaining about the hopeles...more

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Jesse rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

02/08/08

Read in August, 2005

Before The Sportswriter, and before Jernigan, there was Revolutionary Road, the oft overlooked masterpiece by Richard Yates. This was the first novel that took on the idea of suburbs as soul-draining creations made with the plan of homogenizing modern society. The story follows Frank and April Wheeler as they dream of moving to Europe to escape what Frank calls the hopeless emptiness of America. Frank and April both drink too much and their kids are rather non-existent in the novel. They both ac...more

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Carissa rated it:

02/10/08

bookshelves: finished

Read in February, 2008

recommended to Carissa by: Amy
recommends it for: fans of The Great Gatsby

Though I'd heard about it for a while, I must confess that what really convinced me to pick up Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road this month was hearing that Kate Winslet has just completed her work in the book's forthcoming movie adaptation. The movie is directed by Sam Mendes and will be arriving at a theatre near you in December 2008.

Is that a terrible reason to read a book? I must confess a serious soft spot for Kate Winslet, and predict that she will be an excellent fit in the ro...more

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Inge rated it:

(review of isbn 0413757102)

11/16/07

I will admit this book was a little hard for me to get into, but once I did, I REALLY did. It's a quiet little book that unexpectedly snuck up on me. In the beginning, I thought "ugh - what a monotonous, dark, sad, depressing world I'm reading about." But then I realized "oh, this is sort of the point."

Now that I've finished the book, I want to go back and re-read some of the passages because the writing is something to linger over. There's just something about the way ...more

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