‘Revolutionary Road’ by Richard Yates
I’ve been meaning to read this book properly for years and never really got around to buying a copy, but, with the advent of the film adaptation here, I thought now would be the time (or rather, it gave me the impetus I needed).
RR is a great novel, but not a happy one, such is Yates’ bent I presume. There are some absolutely beautiful passages no doubt, but these are not why this book has been so loved and adored by such an elite few.
The real draw of this novel is the despairing reality of it. At no point to you ever feel that Frank and April could not exist, that out there somewhere, live a couple just like them. The pain and frustration of this once bright couple is absolutely palpable. Their fights and their dreams and their loneliness is inescapable and feels totally real. Relentlessly depressing to some, but I feel, shockingly truthful to most. I’ll admit that I did have to stop and do something else at various intervals because things get continually worse when you think they can’t. Most people do not suffer to the extent that the Wheelers do, nor do they take matters into their own hands like they do, but who has not had regrets or abandoned dreams? And it isn’t just Frank and April, but the unrequited want of Shep Campbell, the faltering cheer of Mrs Givings, the innocent hope of the Wheeler children.
These brief shifts into the minds of the secondary characters are what separate this novel from the sea of domestic frustration novels that sit in our bookshops. These are bright spots, for example, when Frank and April decide on Paris. It’s a wonderful moment of harmony that their daughter notices and though we feel, or even know, that the peace won’t last, the possibility that it does keeps us reading.
I honestly didn’t know what to expect of this book, how I would feel upon reading it at long last, but I am behind all those that have come before me in praising Yates for his keen observation and analysis of the ordinary who could’ve been something else.
