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by: Richard Yates
List Price: $14.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.17 You Save: $4.78 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375708442
ISBN: 0375708448
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: April 25, 2000
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: April 25, 2000
Sales Rank: 529
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Review:
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Nicely written novel about a bunch of losers
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 ... Read More
Rating:  - Marvelous
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 ... Read More
Rating: - A Masterpiece
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. ... Read More
Rating:  - Still Relevant, Always Real
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Lying and Loathing in the Suburbs...
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 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. ... Read More
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