Revolutionary Road

This book fucking took it out of me. I picked it up on Monday and finished it the other night, in the later hours after coming home from the bar. As I read through the last handful of pages, I wasn't sure which character we would relate to more. Frank Wheeler, cynical and manipulative, who trudges through the monotony of his life due to lack of better option, plying himself with alcohol and illicit affairs just to get through? Or are we the hopeless April, stuck in a life not her liking, yet powerless, hopeless, to do anything about it? Maybe we're all John Givings, the once brilliant, now jaded, mental patient whose intellectual gifts are driven away by 'therapy'. Hopefully, none of us fully embody these three characters fully, but, rather, hold the qualities that make them appealing, that make them human, while being spared the characteristics that make them tragic. By all means, I hope we never find ourselves so fucked up and awful, but Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road offers us a brutal, cold portrayal of what can happen when you forget who you are.