People like to blame the social ills they perceive these days to be a result of the “everyone gets a trophy” world millennials were raised in. First of all, we didn’t give ourselves those trophies, boomers. But more importantly, an outsized sense of self-importance is hardly unique to any generation in particular. Richard Yates’ debut novel, Revolutionary Road, explores the hollowness of 1950s suburbia through the lives of a couple who think of themselves as special. After Frank Wheeler’s service as a longshoreman in World War II, he goes to work for NYC-based Knox Machines as a sort of lark…the company had employed his father as a traveling salesman during Frank’s childhood. The joke has worn off, but he refuses to take his work seriously and itches for something more. His wife, April, dreamed of being an actress but her fledgling career never got off the ground and then she got pregnant with the first of their two children. The novel opens with an acting group in their Connecticut suburb putting a play, with April in the lead role. Despite her best efforts, the show tanks and the two have a nasty argument on the side of the road, making it obvious that their marriage has ventured onto thin ice.

Frank starts to feel much more engaged in his job when he finds himself up for a promotion…and starts sleeping with a secretary. April, though, feels stuck in her role as housewife and mother and comes up with a plan to break them out of their rut: they’ll move to Paris, where she’ll work and support the family while Frank figures out what he really wants to do with his life. They’re excited and grow closer while they make plans, but then April becomes pregnant again. At a crossroads, the Wheelers must decide how to reconcile the lives they live with the ones they long for.

At this point, the idea that an “idyllic” suburban life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be is a familiar one. A pretty surface can be used to mask a variety of faults, as anyone who uses social media knows. But Richard Yates had this book (his first!) published in 1961, when a critique of the lifestyle which the country was still very much invested in was much more daring and new. In fact, this book feels very modern as a whole despite being over 60 years old now. I particularly enjoyed the way that Yates illustrated the depths that have grown between Frank and April by contrasting the responses that they hope for from each other with the ones they actually receive. His sensitivity in constructing his characters is illustrated by the way he portrays April’s growing despair despite living a “dream life” with a successful husband and healthy children…and this from a man two years before Betty Friedan wrote about The Problem That Has No Name.

Having seen the movie before I read the book (but long enough ago that I didn’t remember it clearly), I was surprised at how little melodrama there is. It’s tightly constructed yet powerful. There are some missteps, mostly with side characters: Shep Campbell, a neighbor and friend to the Wheelers, is obsessed with April in a way that feels over-the-top, and the times their friends the Givings’s bring over their son, John, who has been institutionalized in a mental hospital only to have the “crazy” person be the one who calls out the falseness of the Wheelers’s masks of happiness is a little too on the nose. That being said, it’s a fairly quick read with a lot of punch in it, and I highly recommend it.