Richard Yates: The Easter Parade

Hi everyone

This is my review for Richard Yates’ The Easter Parade.
My copy has 226 pages and I got it from Book Depository.
You can find all my Richard Yates reviews here.

“Even as little girls, Sarah and Emily are very different from each other. Emily looks up to her wiser and more stable older sister and is jealous of her relationship with their absent father, and later her seemingly golden marriage. The path she chooses for herself is less safe and conventional and her love affairs never really satisfy her. Although the bond between them endures, gradually the distance between the two women grows, until a tragic event throws their relationship into focus one last time.”

I loved this book.

It’s very depressing but it’s so, so beautiful.

Although the book is rather short, it never felt rushed. The story spans a couple of decades and a lot happens in that time but I still felt like I truly understood what Emily was going through.
Emily and Sarah are fascinating, especially in their differences. Both reacted in a totally opposite way to their childhood and the divorce of their parents. I found both characters to be very relatable, human and realistic and though they are flawed and unlikable, I really felt for them.

Yates knows how to write about utterly miserable characters and he does it remarkably well. The book is never sentimental or dramatic; it’s a fascinating view into a time and society that’s not so very different from our own and our way of thinking about women.
The writing is absolute perfection and I couldn’t put the book down.
The loneliness, the hopelessness and sorrow make this book heart wrenching. Both Sarah and Emily are so incredibly lost and alone.

The ending is absolutely perfect. I couldn’t imagine it any other way and it’s so in line with all the characters.

But I really didn’t like sexscenes we got, and especially not how graphic they were. It felt like someone else was writing those. It’s important that we experience Emily’s search for someone to spend her life with and how it goes wrong every time, but the way they were written didn’t fit into the style of the novel.

4.5 STARS

Happy reading!
Helena

Richard Yates: Disturbing the Peace

Hi again

Disturbing the Peace is my fourth Richard Yates novel. You can read my reviews on his other books here.
My beautiful, beautiful book has 253 pages and I got it from Book Depository.

 “John Wilder is in his mid-thirties, a successful salesman with a place in the country, an adoring wife and a ten-year-old son.But something is wrong. His family no longer interests him, his infidelities are leading him nowhere and he has begun to drink too much. Then one night, something inside John snaps and he calls his wife to tell her that he isn't coming home...”

I loved this book.
I loved it so much.

All characters are very mundane, normal or ordinary but that makes the book so much stronger. They are all wonderfully thought out. They have their flaws and their merits; they truly come alive while reading.

We read John Wilder’s slow descent into madness while he keeps denying his illness. As the novel progresses, he spirals ever down.
John always puts himself and his own whims and wants first without considering others, least of all his wife and son. He is utterly dissatisfied with his life, his marriage and his job. Alcohol seems to make him cope with it all, but it doesn’t. I don’t think one leads to the other, but I do believe that the alcohol makes his insanity worse and descend faster.
He is arrogant, selfish and I did not like him for the most parts. But I did care for him.
And that’s Yates’ genious at work.
It is compelling, powerful,  and it feels very realistic.
I had no idea where it would go, let alone where it would end, if it even would or could end somewhere.
Though the subject matter is difficult and it leaves ample place for moralizing, Yates never does.

The ending was absolutely stunning. To see it from someone else’s point of view was a great addition to the way it was going. I cannot imagine a better ending for this book.

5 STARS

Happy reading.
Helena

Richard Yates: Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

Hi

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness is my third Richard Yates novel. I got it from The Book Depository and it has 221 pages.
This is his first collection of short stories.
You can find all my reviews on the novels I’ve read by Richard Yates here.

“Richard Yates's unflinchingly realistic stories explore loneliness, but they don't neglect failure, cruelty, and heartbreak. Most of the stories feature men who have been disappointed, somehow, by their inability to fulfill the promise of their youth.”

I love Yates and even though I found the quality of these short stories mixed I still enjoyed this collection very much.

Each story speaks of someone who doesn’t feel as happy as he/she should or could be.
Every one of them attributes this unhappiness to their job, their marriage or certain circumstances they find themselves in even though most of the characters are not entirely blameless (aren’t we all?).
Ultimately each and every one of them is lonely in one way or another. Maybe they aren’t really noticed, they might be dissatisfied with life, they are men needing their wives income to sustain themselves or teachers who are despised by their pupils; they are all lonely, unhappy, flawed and deluded people.
These stories are about loneliness and all its faces, with or without other people.
This is apparently a theme in a lot of Yates’ work. And I know I’m not even halfway through reading his work I can say that I’m pretty sure I will read a lot more on this topic in his other novels.
But I love this.

It is written as if I’m there. Every conversation rings true, every situation is realistic and every character is fully rounded.

This novel made me feel so sad, so grateful for what I have but also so full of sorrow for what I’ve lost. There’s seldom any form of hope in his work.

I loved this collection.

Happy reading!
Helena

Richard Yates: Cold Spring Harbor

Hi

This is my second novel by Richard Yates. 
You can find all my Yates’ reviews here.
Cold Spring Harbor has only 178 pages.

“When the Shepards' car breaks down in pre-War New York City, a chain of events is set in motion that will transform the lives of the beautiful but stupid Evan Shepard, his doomed lover Rachel, and both their families. Fated to play out the mistakes of their parents, Evan and Rachel quickly discover the betrayal behind the dream, and desperately try every avenue of escape, only to find that all paths lead back to the small Long Island coastal town of Cold Spring Harbor, and to each other. But if there is no better chronicler than Yates of the quiet tragedy of thwarted suburban lives, Cold Spring Harbor is a testament to the absolute necessity of dreaming; for Yates's protagonists, hope may be all there is.”

Cold Spring Harbor is a brutally honest tale of a group of people all connected in a way, but still so very alone. And that loneliness seeps through every word Yates wrote. It’s heartbreaking at times but it is frustrating too.
Cold and disturbed relationships, self-centered, delusional people, there’s not a real likeable character in the whole novel. But the writing evokes empathy for those lost men and women. They all seem to be so human, so normal.

The novel flows effortlessly and I finished it in well under three hours.

Definitely recommended! Though Revolutionary Road is still my favorite.

Happy reading!
Helena

Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road

Hi

This was my second time reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
It has 338 pages and I got it in the beautiful Vintage edition.

Revolutionary Road is Yates' debut novel and in his own words his best work.
It was shortlisted for the National Book Award.

“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.”

This is such a beautiful novel. I loved it even more than the first time.
It’s not sentimental or melodramatic. It’s a clear, controlled and bleak novel.

Frank and April purport to disdain the traditional American suburban lifestyle where everyone should be the same, have the same, want the same and feel the same.
But in Frank’s case this ridicule is just camouflage for his real fear of being uninteresting and unloved by April, for his lack of confidence in his own masculinity. 
Now he is trapped in a job he didn’t want to prove he can provide for his family and he lives in a house in the suburbs because it is expected. These actions and his constant contempt for this very lifestyle only serve the purpose of making him feel like a real man.
His anti-suburban talk and ridicule has become an empty gesture to make him feel sophisticated and to being in April’s eyes the interesting, stifled genius he once was.
When April proposes a move to France he acts enthusiastic but he fears the change and he fears being imasculated even more. For that reason (being less of a man) and only for that reason he takes the moral position and he convinces April to keep the baby, because her unwillingness to bear his child makes him less of a man and unloved by her.

Man this is a work of a true genius.
I loved it; the beautiful prose, the haunting, bleak story, the heart-rending emotions and the almost real characters.
The novel made me cry the first time I read it. Revolutionary Road did it again this time.
It’s a wonderful and amazing novel.

Happy reading!
Helena