Revolutionary Road

Richard Yates works have periodically appeared on my GR feed, with generally good to very good reviews. Yates also appeared recently in a very obscure novel I read called Last of the Summer Hair by Paul Ransom as the major character was reading The Easter Parade.

My 15 hours audio had Revolutionary Road narrated by Mark Bramhall, so I got on with a listening. Though Bramhall is not someone I know, his narration was excellent, and I see why he is in demand.

I have to admit that in my youth I would have run a long way from this novel, but in my much older age this tale of a middle-class neurotic marriage was superb. I hung on every word, every sentence and every nuance. Just by Bramhall's narration alone, his world-weary delivery of sarcasm, irony and scorn for what the situation was, was superb. It told me that the presented sentence he spoke would have been of the highest quality if I had read the physical copy.

There has been a lot written about this novel elsewhere, so just a couple of thoughts on the character of the husband and wife. There was not much to like about husband Frank Wheeler, plainly self-centred, he had a way with words that fooled just about everyone he came into contact with and that included his also neurotic wife April. He also suffered a far too high opinion of his own ability. Wife April was, to a degree, a product of her upbringing and had done what many a young lady has done over the years, got married because she was in love with the idea of being in love. There is nothing romantic about their tale. It is of a banal life unfulfilled. But it is powerfully told and demands one's attention.

Finally, the last lines might be the best I have ever read to end a book.
But from there on, Howard Givings heard only a welcome, thunderous sea of silence. He had turned off his hearing aid.
Just apt!

I had read this appears in best of lists, and I get why. Highly recommended.