Monday, October 12, 2009

Revolutionary Road



This is one book I was ready to be done with. Get divorced already! This is the story of a miserable unhappy couple in the 1950's. Then again maybe they are just a normal couple who seem miserable with each other and with themselves. From the outside appearances to their friends and neighbors they seem like the perfect average couple. He has an average job, they live in an average house, they have two kids. But, they each have such a huge longing for more than they have. She wants to be an actress, he just wants. He's in what he feels is a nothing job that he feels he was forced to take after he got married and found out his wife was pregnant. She didn't want to be pregnant, he didn't really want kids but couldn't stand the thought that she might choose to not have HIS child, so he convinced her to have it and took a job he hated in turn. From there the hate grew, and they continued to do things neither of them wanted to do.

Then one day she decides she wants them to be happy and hatches this grand scheme for them to be. They will run away, leave the country, she'll go to work and let him find himself. Then a wrench gets thrown in the plan, as she finds herself pregnant again. At the same time, Frank discovers that he might actually like his job and maybe he doesn't want to leave after-all.

The constant push and pull they go through with each other left me wanting them to split up. They were both so unhappy why would they stay together, and as the reader I was left wanting nothing more than to see her leave him or him leave her. While the ending was not quite what I expected it wasn't really a huge surprise either.

I really could not find one redeeming value in either April or Frank; both were completely selfish. Both manipulated each other to their own means. So in the end I guess this couple really deserved each other. I guess you could say that this book is about the damage that we do to one another when we don't stop to care about anything but ourselves, when we only try to redeem ourselves instead of feeling for someone else.

Watching the movie, it seemed that Frank was the bad guy, granted April wasn't completely blameless, but the movie seemed to give her a lot more credit than I found in her in the book. In the movie, I almost felt a little sorry for her, but the book didn't really allow for that.