Revolutionary Read

For book club Wednesday, we gathered at Peggy's lovely Haysville home to discuss Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road." I finished the book right before bed Tuesday and absolutely loved the writing, imagery and drama in the tragic tale. To me, the theme was how all the characters were spending their lives pretending to be people they were not, even to the point of self-deception.

I would love to see the movie that's out now with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. I want to see if the director imaged the scenes unfolding the same way I did when I absorbed the details.

One of the things I loved about the book was how it described ordinary human experiences in an extraordinary way. Consider this excerpt, which describes two couples getting together for the evening.

"Hi!" They called to one another.
"Hi! ..." "Hi! ..."
This one glad syllable, borne up through the gathering twilight and redoubling back from the Wheelers' kitchen door, was the traditional herald of an evening's entertainment. Then came the handshakings, the stately puckered kissings, the sighs of amiable exhaustion -- "Ah-h-h"; "Who-o-o" -- suggesting that miles of hot sand had been traveled for the finding of this oasis or that living breath itself had been held, painfully, against the promise of this release. In the living room, having sipped and grimaced at the first frosty brimming of their drinks, they pulled themselves together for a moment of mutual admiration; then they sank into various postures of controlled collapse.