Snapshot Book Review: Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A review by Rachel Wilch said it best: "My hunch is that this book might have really resonated for the dissatisfied housewives/businessmen who read it when it was originally published in 1961. To me, however, Revolutionary Road felt gratuitously dysfunctional and full of charaters who kept claiming they needed to "find themselves", but in fact needed to find some good therapists and a general sense of decency towards their children, their friends, and one another."

As a book about dissatisfaction with the status quo and a longing for times past, about questioning the self and the life one has chosen and is actively choosing, this book does succeed. However, in terms of providing a compelling plot, a cast of characters who are dynamic (which is crucial to any book which is not plot-driven), or even just prettily written prose, Yates fails to deliver.

Bottom line: I'd rather have seen the movie, if just to see DiCaprio play the character Frank.

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