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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780375708442
ISBN number: 0375708448
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: April 25, 2000
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: April 25, 2000
Sale Popularity Level: 428
Studio: Vintage
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
With a new introduction by Richard Ford
'A deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic.' --William Styron
From the moment of its publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs. It's the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.
In his introduction to this edition, novelist Richard Ford pays homage to the lasting influence and enduring power of Revolutionary Road.
Amazon.com Review:
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
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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I just finished this book. I've given it three stars because to Yates' credit, it's a well written, vividly descriptive book--about a bunch of miserable people who stubbornly insist on being unhappy. Frank and April Wheeler are a married couple who would have been better off as lovers for no more than a day or two. They're living the American Dream and yet, all they see fit to do is complain and argue about the stupidest things. April is an unstable mess who let herself get in a situation she never really wanted, and Frank is a yellow-belly coward and a weakling. All they care about is keeping up appearances and are all too willing to live a lie because neither really has the courage to make a REAL break. In my humble opinion, they deserve each other! Other than that, I have to say that Richard Yates is an insightful, sensitiver writer; however, if you read this book with the intention of becoming attached to either or both of the main characters, you'll be sorely disappointed. The Wheelers are amongst the most miserable, unlikeable, irritating characters you'll ever come across. Read this book, and after you're done hug and kiss your spouse(if you're actually in love with him or her, yeesh!)and be happy for the good things you have in life! And if it is the case that you're decidedly UNHAPPY with your life, don't flake out like Frank and April Wheeler did in their own ways--go out and do something about it!!!
Rated by buyers 
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Like many folks, it seems, I hadn't even HEARD of Richard Yates before seeing trailers for the film adaptation of this book. How is that possible? How are American letters so bass-ackward that he isn't on 'The List' of greats along with Updike, Pynchon, Fitzgerald and Stegner? I mean, I studied English Literature in college and never read the guy!
Okay, enough astonished protest. I'm also an obsessive fan of 'Mad Men,' which I now understand is so clearly influenced by this work that it's practically an adaptation in and of itself. The bitter world that Yates exposes resonates with us all, whether we are of the 50s, earlier or later generations; the facts remain the same. How Edith Wharton skewered society's tropes in the nineteenth century and Fitzgerald did the same to the 20s, I feel 'Revolutionary Road' does for the 50s. Yates is relentless in peeling back layer after layer of his characters' perceptions until they are left with nothing, and nothing is who they have become - or, perhaps, always were and just didn't know it. In a sense, it's like 50s gothic; this work is populated with wretches, leading wretched existences, only they see everything through the rose-colored glasses of glossy advertising and suburban dreams.
I would unreservedly recommend this work. Having become a fan of Ian McEwan's character studies (which is how I think of his books), I feel that Yates has the same intriguing touch; his observations on human nature are astute and unforgiving. A beautifully executed book.
Rated by buyers -
I can add nothing to the blurbs copied immediately below, except to say that they're all true:
"Having heard for years that Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road was one of the great but underappreciated American novels, I searched it out. I have spent the months since then pressing it into the hands of anybody who will take it." Richard Lacayo, introducing Time's 100 Best Novels.
"A deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic." William Styron, on Revolutionary Road.
"The Great Gatsby of my time...one of the best books by a member of my generation." Kurt Vonnegut, on Revolutionary Road
Rated by buyers 
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I decided to read this book after hearing about the movie version being released starring Kate Winslet & Leonardo DiCaprio. The story is a quiet, stirring one that slowly twists itself until there is no resolution but to completely snap.
Essentially the book surrounds the lives of a 1950's young, married couple in their late 20s - April & Frank Wheeler - who realize they've somehow ended up giving up their youthful fantasies of living in Europe and doing something important with their lives in exchange for a comfortable life in the suburbs. April, a housewife struggling to the break the mould, spurs the couples' adventurous spirit again after her endeavor to branch out fails spectacularly towards the beginning of the novel. Frank, settled in a thankless job at his own father's previous employer, loves to give off the aura of being successful and going places, but when challenged to follow through, seeks solace in exponentially dangerous ways.
As April & Frank seek to recapture their youthful vigour and passionate love for one another, the intensity of their emotions continue to highlight the cracks in their relationship until everything bubbles over into a dramatic conclusion.
Overall this is a good book - it's well-written, the characters are quite well-defined (even the minor ones) and easy to envision, and surprisingly, much of Frank & April's desperation not to settle or be 'one of them' (suburbanites) is completely relatable to the youth of yesterday that are transitioning to the traditional roles of adulthood. The book isn't a page-turner in the classic sense (at least not till the end), but it's the anticipation that things can only go downhill that will keep you guessing and keep readers interested and emotionally involved to the very last page.
Rated by buyers -
It is a period in the middle of the twentieth century - the hopeful 1950s - and a young couple, Frank and April Wheeler, begin their marriage in New York. Soon after, they are suburbanites, living in a development in Connecticut, on Revolutionary Road.
Their marriage had begun after an unexpected pregnancy. After the birth of the very first child, a second followed. They seemed to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented...Maybe Frank's job is dull and perhaps April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they always believed, deep down, that greatness is just around the corner. And then, as the reality of their own limitations hits them with an almost blunt force, their illusions begin to crumble.
First come the dull, routine days, followed by the drunken fights. Then follows the almost manic plan to pull up stakes and move to Europe, where they can be glamorous expatriates, with April working at the embassy and Frank "finding himself", discovering his hidden talents.
When another unexpected pregnancy blasts them off course, the soul searching begins.
In one enlightened moment, following a terrible fight when each of them flung unforgivable words at each other, April comes to the following conclusions: "...In a sentimentally lonely time long ago, she had found it easy and agreeable to believe whatever this one particular boy felt like saying, and to repay him for that pleasure by telling easy, agreeable lies of her own, until each was saying what the other most wanted to hear - until he was saying `I love you' and she was saying `Really, I mean it; you're the most interesting person I've ever met.'...Soon you were saying `I'm sorry, of course you're right,' and `Whatever you think is
best,' ...and the subsequent thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people..."
Thus sums up the marriage for April on that day at the end...And then she does something so horrifying, so completely unexpected, yet expected at the same time and life for this couple is forever altered.
Revolutionary Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries) is a disturbingly authentic portrayal of what might seem to be a typical suburban young couple at a time when life was golden. Soon to be released as a movie, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, the characters are memorable and chillingly haunting.
Laurel-Rain Snow
Author of:
Miles to Go, etc.
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