Rating: 
Summary: An Indictment Against Sentimentality
Review: Revolutionary Road is truly one of the great American novels. This is a book that illuminates how we fool ourselves into thinking we're smarter, more talented, and full of more potential than those around us. Yates's eye for upper-middle-class, college-educated men and women with artistic leanings is dead-on. And in capturing these men and women so accurately, Yates can be very, very funny, but the humor in Yates's work is always rooted in a deeper, nearly bottomless sadness. Please don't let the often noted "darkness" of the book dissuade you from buying it. If you're a writer, read it for Yates's attention to craft. If you're a reader, read Revolutionary Road because it'll move you and, perhaps, enlarge the way you see the world. In either case -- writer or reader -- you won't be disappointed. Revolutionary Road is a classic that deserves far more attention.
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Summary: Disturbing Genius
Review: Dick Yates' best novel reads as the prototypical and best scathing indictment of Eisenhower-era suburbianism. Though the principals are not sympathetic, and it is not the opus of a happy man, the book excels with perfectly crafted prose, and an impeccably well-told story. "Revolutionary Road" is not light reading, but it is an exemplar of its genre: late 50's regional (New York) American tragedy. It is required reading for literate Americans.
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Summary: A very modern book written in 1961
Review: April and Frank Wheeler are around thirty and live in a suburb in Connecticut. They have a nice house, Frank has a job that is not too demanding and they have two small kids, so in essence all a couple can wish. Except, that they are not happy at all: April has not become the actress she wanted to be, they consider their neighbours and friends to be narrow-minded and they have fights over small matters that become so big that it is practically impossible to cope with it. In a last attempt to escape April decides that the family will move to Europe: she will work and Frank will finally have time to develop his talents. Frank does not exactly want to go, but he does not know how to tell his wife. And so the family heads for disaster without anybody noticing or knowing what to do about it.This book was written in 1961, was nominated for big prizes together with such classics as Catch-22 and was forgotten after that. It is really a very modern book: the dreams and expectations of "the common" people have not changed much in all those years and the way in which Frank and April react and interact is only too recognizable. At times this book really hurts. You would like to shout to them: "Listen to each other!" "Don't fight over marginal subjects!" A good book that deserves to be rediscovered.
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Summary: A clinic on writing
Review: Yates has been called a writer's writer which I suppose is to say he's a brilliant practioner of the craft. "Revolutionay Road" is a classic of fluid writing, integrating scenes and characters, shifting focus and perspective. Sometimes while reading a book, even by the most skilled of authors, readers will come across a passage they feel could have been written better, or see a poorly drawn character or suffer a weak description, there's nothing of the sort in "Revolutionary Road."
This is a story -- set during the post World War II boom -- of a suburban couple, living what would appear to be the middle class dream. But "Revolutionary Road" punctures the notion of normacly, giving dimension to its characters and stories behind them that explain their not-so-ordinary actions. Any surprises are mild. Yates does not telegraph what will happen, he leads to events naturally and meticulously. No actions, no spoken words are without motivation. It is why events happen rather than what happens, that makes "Revolutionary Road" a great novel.
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Summary: Everyone Should Read This Book
Review: When I first picked up "Revolutionary Road," I had read nothing about it. After reading it, I wondered why it hadn't been required reading somewhere in my education. Simply a masterpiece, which has great resonance today. Buy this book and cherish it, along with everything else Yates ever wrote.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: I really don't know what else to say about this novel. I read about it in Nick Hornby's Believer column, and picked it up recently. Yes, it's bitter as hell, and yes, Yates is a slightly harder on the female characters than the male, but it's a wise, sad, and moving book. One of the only books written in the 60s that isn't complete garbage.
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Summary: Not a Bedtime Story
Review: Dick Yates was not a happy guy. The novel is a perfectly crafted, difficult, wincingly real story of how two people can destroy each other. The fact that he dedicated it to his ex-wife only adds to its autobiography and ugly reality. As an unappologetic modern novel, it is nearly perfect. But caveat to the reader, this one's gonna hurt.
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Summary: The best book you've never heard of...
Review: Read this book. Tell all of your friends about it. Recommend it to your book group and any other book group you can grab the ear of.
I can't understand why this book is not already a classic, as much hailed and critiqued as "East of Eden" or "The Great Gatsby". This is a perfectly devastating look at the middle-class life that most of us dream about, but we don't dare look at too closely. The characters, each one given a flawed soul by Yates, do not know exactly what they want because they do not know exactly who they are (as opposed as who they are "supposed" to be). This may be your best book purchase of the year.
Rating: 
Summary: shallow, selfish, predictable
Review: even though this book is about the 1950's, it is still the best novel on the suburbs that you will ever read. i don't think any modern writers today can approach the monstrosity of suburban life with as much passion and honesty as Yates. every one of his sentences seems to carry us headlong into a whirl wind of disaster. watching the wheelers is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. we'd like to turn away, and pretend that this is only a novel we're reading, but we know, deep down, that there's so much more going on here. we feel as though Yates has carried us to the farthest recesses of despair; he has touched upon some semblance of truth, and we can't do anything but look and listen, and take it all in, in spite of the pain. Kafka said in his youth that "we should only read the books that wound and stab us...we need the books that affect us like a disaster." if there is any one novel of this century that fits that description, it is Revolutionary Road.
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