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The Woman Upstairs
Claire MessudClaire Messud 9780307596901

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Revolutionary Road (Movie Tie-In Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Richard Yates

ISBN13: 9780307454782
ISBN10: 0307454789
Condition: Standard
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Staff Pick

April and Frank try to salvage their crumbling marriage by moving to Paris and starting over. This searing portrait of a marriage on a downward slide is incredibly well done, and it will stay with you long after you close this book. Haunting!
Recommended by Dianah, Powell's City of Books

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to crumble.

With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

Synopsis:

Yates' classic novel of suburban disillusionment is now a major motion picture from DreamWorks, opening in theaters on December 25 and reuniting the stars of "Titanic," Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

About the Author

Richard Yates was born in 1926. The author of several acclaimed works of fiction, including Revolutionary Road, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, Disturbing the Peace, and The Easter Parade, he was lauded during his lifetime as the foremost novelist of the post-war "age of anxiety". He died in 1992.

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:

: ldahome, January 2, 2013 (view all comments by ldahome)
This is my favorite novel that I read in 2012.
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: Jennmarie68, March 27, 2012 (view all comments by Jennmarie68)
I have to admit that the only reason I finally picked up this book was because I caught the last 30 minuets or so of the movie on TV and was intrigued. Then I learned that it was a book and so I decided to read the book before I watched the whole movie. I still have yet to see the whole movie, but based on what I saw the book is better than the movie and I thought what I saw was pretty good!

I'm really not 100% sure why I liked this book so much. I didn't like Frank, and I despised April. They just weren't good people. They both seemed to be a bit self-centered and not quite "grown-up". So how I enjoyed a book so much when I didn't like the main characters is a mystery to me. I thought that they both needed a big dose of reality and that the world needed to knock them down a bit. But the supporting characters were pretty good. And the overall character development was great. It would have been a lot harder to despise them if I'd not had such a good understanding of them!

The writing in this book was great. I could picture everything in my mind as I was reading. At the beginning of the book I saw Leonardo and Kate as Frank and April, but as I continued to read the image I had of them in my mind changed so much. That was really impressive to me. When I read a book after I've already seen the movie I tend to use the actor's and actresses in my mental image of the book. I don't know if it was more attributed to the fact that I've only seen part of the movie or the fact that the writing in this book was really good and over-rode my natural tendency to rely on images I already have. Either way it was refreshing to read a book without picturing the actors that were in the movie.
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Product Details

ISBN:: 9780307454782
Author:: Yates, Richard
Publisher:: Vintage
Subject:: General
Subject:: Literary
Subject:: Married people
Subject:: Suburban life
Subject:: Domestic fiction
Subject:: General Fiction
Subject:: Literature-A to Z
Edition Description:: Mass market paperback
Series:: Vintage Contemporaries
Publication Date:: 20081230
Binding:: Paperback
Grade Level:: General/trade
Language:: English
Pages:: 480
Dimensions:: 6.70x4.10x1.30 in. .50 lbs.

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Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
History and Social Science » American Studies » Popular Culture

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