Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Revolutionary Road
Book Review: I must have missed something...
Summary: 3 Stars
I am familiar with the spectacular rave reviews this book has garnered, but I felt the characterizations were cold and univiting...I guess I missed the rave review boat on this one.Book Review: If you liked THE CORRECTIONS...
Summary: 4 Stars
Like Franzen's "The Corrections", Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road" is full of distasteful characters and the current society (in this case 1955) gets a scouring. This is an excellent novel of modern culture and family life; just as appropriate today as it was over 40 years ago.
How fitting and ironic that it is the "crazy" character that has them all pegged!
Book Review: It cuts deep and it cuts true
Summary: 5 Stars
On the surface Revolutionary Road might appear dated - the pre-dinner cocktails, everyone smoking, Frank works for a company that is about to embark on making...computers! - but dig a little deeper, and you will find that this novel is timeless. Yates unflinchingly peels apart what it is like to be in your thirties, unsure of who you are and what you're supposed to be doing, convinced that you're not living the life you were intended to lead. The novel is also a brilliant character study of two people trapped in a marriage and in a life that neither wants, and how their self-deception leads to self-destruction. The writing here is fantastic - it's urbane and cuts deep, yet is completely accessible and is full of sharp, caustic wit. The novel's plot and themes are largely bleak and dark, but it's impossible to read Revolutionary Road and not find some light creeping in. Recommended for anyone in their late twenties or thirties.Book Review: Leave It to Beaver on Acid!
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Yates now gets his due. John Updike had ripped him off. Read Couples after Revolutionary Road and see what I mean, but let's face it: Yates is head and shoulders above the latest Post-Modern's whoever. No, Yates was a storywriter in the Realism School. He reminds me a bit of a contemporary, Walker Percy (The Moviegoer) Where Percy's character's find or at least try to find God in 1950's New Orleans's, Yates', April and Frank never actually get a foot into church. Their New York City Suburb is a purgatory of lawn mowers and suburban strivers. The 1950's dream, the migration into country homes, a cookie cutter cul-de-sac, it becomes The Hell. A bit romantic or over fevered this distrust of The American Dream? Yes, but it seemed so real in the dark crevices of the Eisenhower years. The intellectuals had read The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald seemed to be a sage though his characters were definitely not the middle class. By the 50's there was the new weekend-leisure class, a poor cousin of Fitzgerald's protagonists. The wishful world envisioned by April (not unlike Gatsby's muse), a girl that just can't seem to get to that next level where art and life come together in exquisite excellence; the disillusioned mother won't bring a baby into the holocaust of husband, home, and Leave It to Beaver. Ten years later, everyone dropped acid and dropped out.Book Review: Likability of Characters is Irrelevant
Summary: 4 Stars
A book club I participated in had a very lively discussion of this book which encompassed social, cultural, and psychological trends of the Fifties: a debate about whether the Wheeler's fate was due to their own behavior or the social pressures of the times; the rhetorical device of irony and how that reflected the author's tone; a comparison of the book and the movie; the novel's many themes. We didn't discuss whether or not the characters were likable. Such a concern means that the reader is looking for entertainment rather than the understanding that can come from engaging with serious literature.