my revolution

This was my first visit to an official book club, and it was pretty fun:) It had all the requisites: women, wine, and home-baked chocolate chip and oatmeal-raisin cookies (I felt so pedestrian with my measly contribution of potato chips and pretzels, although I redeemed myself a bit with my terra vegetable chips), and South Philly. OK, maybe not South Philly, a neighborhood that makes West Philly look like Greenwich, CT in comparison. The women were really sweet and a few of them were my age! And not everyone was married! Even better, we actually discussed the book for about an hour before moving onto a more general discussion about conformity, privacy, and facebook.

Our book was Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, a well written and brilliantly executed story about people being stifled by white picket fences and kids in the 1950s. It was also one of the most depressing books that I've ever read. It started out mildly depressing and ended up crumpled in an all-consuming malignant tumor of misery. Also, I spent the day before reading The Emperor's Children, which I can also confidently place in the extremely depressing category.

Revolutionary Road tells the story of a young couple fighting for their grand delusions while saddled with two kids, two unimaginative neighbors, and two hearty scoops of immaturity. Evidently a happy ending wasn't going to materialize, but the weight and absolute soul-crushing account of Frank and April Wheeler was quite unexpected. Who knew suburbia could be that bad?

As the novel starts, April Wheeler, a pretty blond housewife with big plans, is the star of a local play that the neighborhood guild is putting on. We're immediately introduced to the peculiar dynamics of two slightly off-putting people after the play wraps, and the marriage (as well as everything else) doesn't really improve after that. April is stuck doing dishes and scrubbing the oven every day and Frank has a deathly boring job involving typewriter manuals. As a side note, one of the women at the book club (fairly pretty and in her mid twenties) has almost exactly same job (I did anxiously inquire after her mental well-being). It's amazing how much drama Frank endures besides his hypothetical paper cuts.

The book is mostly told from Frank's point of view and is faintly reminiscent of Mad Men on severe depressants. Yates does a beautiful job constructing the dialogue and arranging each scene in a lovely and ultimately well-wrapped arc. The form is good and the function even better. Although all of the characters were heavily (or moderately heavily) flawed, they were all gripping in different ways and one was almost sympathetic. My only complaint is the faint whiff of didactism and the occasional plot device that floats around in the story. Although Revolutionary Road is an indictment on conformity and repression, it also speaks powerfully about family and individual accomplishment. The language is moderately simple but deceptively rich underneath. After 50 years, the book is as relevant today as when it was first published and a joy to read.