I could tell you the whole plot in one paragraph.
Yet instead of a light tale stretched over the length of a novel, Revolutionary Road is a deep study of its characters.
The story revolves around Frank and April Wheeler, a young married couple who believe they are more clever than they actually are. Frank does as little as he can at work because it is the early sixties, a time when men could fill their days with boozy work lunches and by having affairs with secretaries. Meanwhile, April feels the boredom of being a housewife and grasps for something more.
Their initial romance wasn’t built on love.
It was more about finding a good looking mate and working on the relationship from there. Even their older neighbours, the Campbells, both feel they settled for the best mate they could get. The husband often turns off his hearing aid and just lets his wife talk, while nodding and verbally responding on autopilot.
The theme of Revolutionary Road is the banality of suburban life, and how creative people can feel trapped playing the roles society expects of them. It was written in the period it is set.
Yates deftly captures this theme in his prose.
It is why such a simple plot becomes an immersive experience.
There is this beautiful paragraph showing Frank as a kid on his first visit to New York, looking upward at a skyscraper for the first time. His childlike sense of awe is easily identifiable to the reader.
Another stand out paragraph is set in a ‘run down beer-and-pizza joint’ focussing on the drummer of a live band.
Socking the bass drum as if to box the ears of every customer in the house, doing his damnedest to snare the tom-tom, he would take off in a triumph of misplaced virtuosity that went relentlessly on and on until it drenched his hair with sweat and left him weak and happy like a child.
This is what I mean about a deep study of character. Every moment is expressed with such clarity, you are inside the mind of whoever’s point of view is being explored in any given scene – whether you first look up at a skyscraper, or play a drum, or have an affair, or go through the motions of an unfulfilled life.
For a modern reader, this may not be a page turner. And while I often didn’t return to this book every day, it was a pleasure to spend time with it when I did.
Five stars.
kevin klehr 