Reading Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road in 2009, one would expect a quaint novel of times long since past. Instead, one gets a penetrating shot of life masquerading as adults in the suburbs that plays as true today as it did in 1961. Sure, a few things seem anachronistic in expected housewifery, three-martini lunches and the obsession with classical music but if these were traded in for telecommuting, organic sandwich shops and hipster music…well, we wouldn’t be too far off, now would we?

The reason this story works so well is because Frank and April Wheeler work so well. They’re each a little damaged, each has an idea of what being grown-up is, each has little lies and myths that have become the truths that make them real. But, mostly, both of them have come to believe that they’ve accidentally ended up in a place that they’ve never intended to be despite having clearly made choices to get there all along.

Frank and April Wheeler believe they’re alone in this thinking.

And this is what makes Yates novel so brilliant. I can imagine the many people reading this in the 60s going, “yes, this is what we do!” or “do you remember when we said we’d go to Europe!” or worriedly saying, “you don’t think it would ever be this bad between us, do you?” and secretly thinking, “I hope it hasn’t been this bad already.”

In the pressure cooker of suburbia, with the added pressure of appearances that can never be kept up with – Frank and April’s story is not a happy one. This is not so much a condemnation of suburbia, but on the danger of running away from owning the life you’re living in favor of constantly dreaming up the next, bigger, better life that will fix everything that’s wrong between you.