Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I saw a preview recently for a new movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, Revolutionary Road, which looked pretty intriguing and when I found out it was a book I had to go get it. I'm about half way through now, and it is nice to finally read something with depth (unlike the Twilight series, which was nothing but a guilty pleasure at first and quickly became incredibly boring and predictable) and not about vampires. After reading all four books in the Twilight series I read Charlaine Harris' Dead Until Dark. It is also a series, the southern vampire series. HBO has a show, True Blood based off of it that everyone keeps telling me is so "awesome." Well, the book was okay.
Anyways, back to Revolutionary Road. It is about a young couple, Frank and April, in the 50's who seem perfect. They live in a cute suburban house with two young children. Their lives are in actuality suffocating them, because it is no longer what they originally dreamed it to be. They enjoy talking about their hatred for suburbia and the people who populate it with their insignificant issues, but come to realize that everything they said they hated is what they are. The book deconstructs the "American Dream." It can be very depressing, but also incredibly fascinating.
Here is a passage I find myself reading over and over. It is when Frank and April are having a fight early on in the book and Frank is reflecting about how the whole mess started - with having a child, he didn't even want, too soon. Wasn't it true, then, that everything in his life from that point on had been a succession of things he hadn't really wanted to do? Taking a hopelessly dull job to prove he could be as responsible as any other family man, moving to an overpriced, genteel apartment to prove his mature belief in the fundamentals of orderliness and good health, having another child to prove that the first one hadn't been a mistake, buying a house in the country because that was the next logical step and had to prove himself capable of taking it. Proving, proving; and for no other reason than that he was married to a woman who had somehow managed to put him forever on the defensive, who loved him when he was nice, who lived according to what she happened to feel like doing and who might at any time -- this was the hell of -- who might at the end of the day or night just happen to feel like leaving him.
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