Book Review: Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road - by Richard Yates

My rating 2 ½ stars out of 5

Over all I did not enjoy the book, I would give it a much lower rating but the book was extremely well written so I think it deserves the 2 ½.

I did not like the book because it was depressing. This is a story set in the 1950’s about an unhappy husband and wife stuck in the suburbs with 2 children. It is a life neither one of them envisioned nor enjoys.

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.

As much as I did not really enjoy the story of this book, it is so well written and deals with a timeless issue of what the true definition of happiness and fulfillment in life is, it was hard to believe it was written in 1961.
Movie Note: as you most likely know, this book was made into a very popular movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, I have not seen it, but have been told the movie is spot on to the book.