Revolutionary Road

Thanks to a film adaptation that reunites Titanic co-stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Yates' classic masterwork is reaching the mass audience it has long deserved. First published in 1961 (just around the time that the AMC show Mad Men, which references the novel several times, is set), Revolutionary Road tells the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a young suburban married couple in the mid ’50s whose inflated sense of intelligence and culture spurs April to propose they leave their Connecticut community and move to Paris, where she will support Frank's dreams of doing something beyond ordinary office work. But as Yates reveals, in bleak and unsettling terms, the couple's lofty aspirations ultimately proves to be their downfall, and their deep misjudgment of themselves and each other has tragic consequences. Mark Bramhall's audio performance, unfortunately, does not live up to the novel's outstanding quality. Frank and April's roiling arguments seem muted, and the vocal timbre of the narration can't quite match Yates' satirical but sympathetic intentions. Performance flaws, however, cannot negate the resonating power of Revolutionary Road, a book that demands to be read again and again for new and fresh insights into the American psyche.