Caroline2 and I are both reading this book

Sharing this book with Suzanne12. So far I've read the first chapter. It's set in the mid 1950's in Connecticut near New York. The Laurel players, an amateur dramatic group are performing their first production. The dress rehearsal goes really well despite all the worries. Disaster stikes on the big night though when the lead man is taken ill. Things start off well and the leading lady is impressive but the understudy/director struggles and mishap after mishap leads to a deterioration in everyones' performance including the leading lady. The performers and audience struggle on but it's excruciating. It isn't clear yet who the protagonists are, I guess this chapter is just setting the scene with a play gone badly despite best hopes and much work.

Sharing this book with Caroline2, I have read the first 4 chapters and reflecting back to the first chapter has given this first chapter a sense of irritable uncertainty which sets the tone for the other chapters I have read. The play by this community amateur acting group, in Connecticut (1955) has the aristrocratic April Wheeler as the lead actress. She is described as talented, but let down in part by the sudden illness of the leading man, every dramatic group's worst nightmare. There was also a sense in the writing that there were flaws in the play in spite of the unforseen circumstances - possibly the choice of the play itself. The play lacked the cohesion of a polished performance. The disappointing play was also half heartedly received by the audience who put on a brave face in spite of the obvious poor performance.

Just finished chapter 4. Phew, this is uncomfortable reading! The voice of chapters 2 to 4 is that of Frank Wheeler just about to turn 30, husband to April, the leading lady in the failed play, and father to two small children. There's a difficult relationship between him and his wife, he doesn't know how to deal with her, especially in the aftermath of the play's disasterous first night. He desperately want to be able to make her happy, for everything to be hunky-dory and to be seen as a solid but not boring man in their world. It isn't to be. April is equally desperate to be admired and set apart, and the play's failure is probably the worst thing that could have happened to her. As her husband knows but doesn't want totally to believe, her capacity to love is outweighed by her desire to shine. In his clumsy attempts to mollify her she see's only his short comings which repel her, and not his genuine need to have a loving relationship with her. So as he reaches out to her she repulses him and he is hurt and angry. They both clearly blame thier upbringing for their problems, but don't see that the hurt that was done to them by their parents - Frank's critical father, and April's barely present parents was a result of their parents' own problems. Instead they have looked to each other for salvation, hoping for to feel more valued, but so far with bitter consequences.

We read to the end of Part 1 about 6 weeks ago I think. Frank has committed to going as a family with April to a new 'meaningful' life in Paris where April will support the family while he finds himself and his true vocation.

We finished up to the end of Part 2 (Ch 6)about 10 days ago. Frank and April are on a high getting on well together but removed from everyone else with their plans of moving. But Frank has doubts. At work he seems to have accidently done a gone job on a sales leaflet, and he's offered better prospects. Towards the end of the section April discovers she's pregnant and is distraught. Frank is secretly relieved, Paris will have to wait. He handles the situation with April to his satisfaction - 'And there was a new maturity and manliness in the kindly, resolute face that nodded back at him in the mirror.' (He spends a lot of time looking at himself in the mirror.)He feels back in control, then he discovers a rubber syringe in the linen cupboard.

I have been reading this book with Caroline2. I finished the last part this week a day before we were to meet to discuss the book. In some ways I think I was putting it off because I knew what was to come having seen the film. In some ways viewing April disintegrating into her own depression and self destruction made uncomfortable reading. I felt really angry with her when she didn't buy into Franks idea of getting help. In the book April said that she didn't love Frank I felt that behind it all he really did love her but he had a streak of his own self love and self importance which compounded with her unattainable and aloof personna made it a stormy relationship. The aloof and arty personna along with her personal beauty made April desirable to other men which proved to be the case with her neighbour Shep Campbell, though again even in this encounter April expressed no feelings. The awfulness of what she did to herself in causing her to lose the baby and eventually bleed to death did have a sense that she may have survived to live by the hospital intervention. She did actually call the ambulance so for Frank, he possibly was left with the fact that she was trying to save herself inspite of herself. This was a particularly sad book and I as a reader was left wondering who are the people who live in Revolutionary Road. In the final paragraphs Mrs Givings who intially loved the Wheelers then turned her back on them embracing the new people, the Braces saying they are more our kind of people - did she really know or was she going to carry on in her wittering superficial way. Her husband in the end switched of his hearing aid.

I pretty much agree with Suzanne12's comments above. I'm impressed by the way the author shows us Frank's character, his weakness and yearning to be seen be 'manly' and his feelings for April and his need for her love and admiration. They seem to have the American dream of a nice home, family and a comfortable life but both have aspirations for a more meaningful life. It's April that has the genuine determination to do something it about however seemingly impractical. I don't have much sympathy for either character, they seem to confuse personal excellence and superiority with spirituality which is what is missing from their lives. Suppose 'The Petrified Forest' had been a success, and April a local star, would those yearnings for meaning have been met and their lives continued happily in their despised conventional suburbia? I recognise the Wheelers feelings about their lives and the people they find themselves amongst, I heard a lot of it from my parents' (middle class) and their generation (funnily enough they would be the same age). Interesting food for thought...

Here's an interesting quote ,that sheds a rather different light on the story, from the author in 1972 :- (1972 issue of Ploughshares), Yates detailed the title's subtext:

“ I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs — a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witchhunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that — felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit — and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties.["

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

At the Riverside Inn Victoria Road in Chelmsford about 7pm at Chelmsford Bookcrossers Meet, this month only on the SECOND Tuesday of the month!

Picked up last night at the Chelmsford BC meet. I have seen the film and thought it was a good movie so look forward to seeing how the book compares

A really good read, I loved the language, the distance created through the narrative almost as if it was a commentary on something you were watching on a screen. Although, in several places I did want ro give the pair of them a slap - especially when he kept checking out the profile if his face in the mirror.
This book is going into a bookbox and will be off travelling kn the next week or so. Thanks for sharing.

This has now gone off travelling in Soffita1's film book box, I hope that the next reader loves it as much as I did, thank you for sharing x

Arrived in my film bookbox, been wanting to read this for ages.

On the shelf with the papers.

Did you get a chance to read this in the end?

Yes I did, I'm just very behind on my journal entries! I thought it was really good, I liked the style of writing, the way you got more and more perspectives of the marriage crumbling. I'm glad I've read it, not sure if I'll look out for the DVD though as it seems that the tense atmosphere would be very hard to get across on screen.