Isn’t it wonderful how life arranges scrumptiously serendipitous little coincidences?
While browsing the shelves of the local library a few months ago I happened across Revolutionary Road and drawn by the fifties artwork on the cover popped it into my pink basket and took it home without any expectations, (I am a judge a book by it’s cover kinda gal- gets me into terrible trouble in the dating department!) simply because although I have read some of Richard Yates work before (The Easter Parade is raw and softly spoken) I had never heard of this book…
But oh what a treasure! A deft weaving of surburban disappointment, the bitter pinpricks that needle marriage and the kind of writing that makes me want to cry make this my favorite book of the year and so I was all the more thrilled to hear that Leo and Kate are once again joining forces to bring Revolutionary Road to the big screen…
The fact that I have read the book before I will watch the film quietly pleases me because I simply couldn’t do it the other way around… I prefer to see the movie played out in my own mind before I endure or indeed enjoy someone else’s interpretation of it. Even when, as in this case, said interpretation is brought to us by Sam Mendes. A man I think I would probably trust to bring my dreams to life.
Read it. Now. And when you are done seek out Eleven Kind’s of Loneliness and weep for a generation we still revere.
