Revolutionary Road by Yates (Fiction)

This was the October selection for the bookclub I am in. I thought hmmm....looked hokey, but this book was not what I thought. It turned out to be a highly relevant social commentary. 

Set in the 1950s it chronicles the marriage of April and Frank Wheeler. He works in "The City" (New York) and they reside in the country on Revolutionary Road. The central focus of the book is to create an "us and them". Both April and Frank once resided in The City and considered themselves thinkers, doers and idealists. Above all, they were not suburbanites. They were better. No one sat around having the intellectual conversations like they did-especially not those who live on Revolutionary Road. It was this supposed separation that plants the idea in April's head. She believes that uprooting the husband and kids and getting a new start in Europe is the only hope to truly separate themselves from them and that way of living; to get away from the gossip, topiaries, and the general trappings of the silly American Suburbanites. The Europeans would say "You are not like other Americans, you are so progressive and intellectual".  The delusion of uniqueness enables the true form of their life and marriage to be hidden away in a dark corner; only the reader is the wiser. Frank is catastrophically (yes, I mean catastrophically) manipulative and they are both the the type of people they claim to despise. The intimacy of their marriage is, in large part, based on the constant manipulation of the other person.  It is their delusions that bring about the tragic conclusion. (which I cannot tell you!)

This book highlights the lies that we tell ourselves to make us feel unique and special. (Or more correctly, the lies that you tell yourselves. I am not like that.....I am special. ) It is about the double standards, the manipulations, and the delusions of superiority that plague so many minds.