REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

RICHARD YATES

ISBN 10: 0099518627 / ISBN 13: 9780099518624

Published by VARIOS, VG EDICIONES, 2007

About this Item

Korean edition of Richard Yatess masterpiece REVOLUTIONARY ROAD (adapted into a motion picture featuring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) Through a bright, talented couple Frank and April living with children in a Connecticut suburb, Yates realistically reveals the portrayal of American life in 1950s and incisively criticizes materialism. Korean translation by Yu Jeong Hwa. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

Seller Inventory # 97210

Bibliographic Details

• Title: REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
• Publisher: VARIOS, VG EDICIONES
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099518627
• ISBN 13: 9780099518624
• Binding: Rústica
• Edition: 1.
• Condition: Bien
• Dust Jacket Condition: Bien
• Book Type: LIBRO
• Seller catalogs:
  • Inglés

About this title

Synopsis

Here is more than fine writing; here is what, added to fine writing, makes a book come immediately, intensely and brilliantly alive...a masterpiece' Tennessee Williams. 'Easily the best novel I've read this year' Nick Hornby. Hailed as a masterpiece from its first publication, Revolutionary Road is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright young couple who are bored by the banalities of suburban life and long to be extraordinary. With heartbreaking compassion and clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April's decision to change their lives for the better leads to betrayal and tragedy.

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