Details
Synopsis
A suburban family--Frank, April, and the two kids--breaks down: April decides they should move to Paris, and Frank gets involved in a messy affair at the office. Richard Yates's brilliant 1961 novel, in which there are no winners, is a satirical dissection of suburbia in the 1950s and a probing examination of the sadness, emptiness, and self-deception at the heart of some American lives and relationships. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD was a finalist for the National Book Award.
| Details | | Series: | Vintage Contemporaries Series |
| Size | | Length: | 463 pages | | Height: | 6.8 in | | Width: | 4.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 8.0 oz |
Industry Reviews
"This is the material of comedy, and there are scenes in the novel that border on slapstick, but rather than innocent misunderstandings that prove harmless, the characters' misadventures are unremittingly bleak and confirm the emptiness of their lives....Richard Yates's satire is not confined to the tensions of middle-class American life, but lays bare the adjustment to its shifting boundaries and in the improbable balance of restlessness and complacency he can find neither cause to celebrate nor reason to forgive."
Times Literary Supplement - Stan Trachtenburg (01/26/2001)
"Originally published in 1961, this gratifyingly beautiful novel has been reissued again--and for good reason....[A]n overlooked masterpiece of American tragedy."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - Oscar C. Villalon (11/19/2000)
"The book is structured around a series of similar episodes, each profoundly disappointing, each following the same pattern. Hope and happiness are there to provide proleptic irony: to be mocked by the damp underwear of the miserable present....The novel often has a polemic bitterness--but polemic usually has a target, and Yates's disapproval is universal. As a panorama of pain and unhappiness, his novel rivals MISS LONELYHEARTS,with the important difference that it never erupts into gleeful grotesquerie. Reading the novel is a mirthless experience: it is satire shorn of humour and excess."
London Review of Books - Theo Tait (02/06/2003)
|
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
All rights reserved.
