What’s BookieMonster Currently Reading? Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I’m having a bit of trouble trying to come up with a way to start this post. I’m also having a bit of trouble coming up with a way to keep writing this post, to be honest.

Revolutionary Road

Richard Yates – in my opinion a vastly underrated 20th century writer. I’ve already bent your ear about The Easter Parade. This title has recently had more exposure due to the Leonardio DiCaprio – Kate Winslet movie adaptation (“First time together since Titanic” – life really does go from the ridiculous to the sublime). I’m sure that induced many to quickly buy the book (complete with movie tie-in cover) and just as quickly never read it.

I pity them really. Because if they haven’t read it they’ve missed out on one of the most real, most heartbreaking reading experiences. Yates is a master at conveying lives being quietly strangled by expectation, convention and desperation. Frank and April Wheeler live in 1950s Connecticut, Frank commutes every day to an office where he does nothing (unless he’s drinking with colleagues or illicit afternoon trysts with a secretary), April is a housewife. This isn’t who they are, they tell themselves, they’re not part of the button-down suburban types they live amongst, they are better than that and have hopes and dreams and intellect to carry them above the lives they’ve found themselves living. They’re going to move to France and live lives that are free.

I wish I could be a good enough writer to accurately convey how devastating this book is – the breakdown of their dreams, and the slow reveal that shows all the dreams they’ve had to give up throughout their lives. Yates so perfectly captures the sheer tedium of corporate office life, the pressure of providing in a consumerist society, the harsh reality of living in a relationship with someone you really don’t love (or like), the cultural dumbing down to appeal to the masses, and the many little disappointments of life that it almost seems unbelievable that this book was first published in 1961. Plus ca change…

Anyway, I am going to keep this short as I’m disappointing myself now with what seems like silly ways of describing something so admirable. Needless to say, highly recommended. Read this book and meditate on life, love and the point of it all.