Times of turmoil (Revolutionary Road)

April and Frank Wheeler lead a happy life. They have two children and live in a detached house in a suburb of New York. Frank works for a long-established company in the city, while April looks after the house and children. She also plays in an amateur theater group. Wonderful. And yet they are both deeply unhappy.

Frank hates his job, which he finds unsatisfying, and when the premiere of the theater group turns into a fiasco and the two of them fall out over it, April finally comes up with the saving idea: they break up their tents in the USA and go to Europe together. April wants to look for a job as a secretary with the American overseas forces and Frank should take some time to think about what he really wants to do with his life.

Both decide to take this step together. Their environment reacts with ridicule and disbelief. The wife is supposed to earn a living and the husband does nothing? Unthinkable. When Frank is offered a promotion in his job, the decision begins to erode. And then April tells Frank that she is pregnant again. The plan to go to Europe seems to be history.

With this novel, US author Richard Yates has created an abysmal psychological study of life in the rural suburbs. Role models, the opinions of neighbors - all of this dominates social life and therefore also private life. April and Frank perish in this corset. Frank is not strong enough to live his life the way he wants to, and April alone cannot break her shackles. It would have taken both of them. Yates dissects his characters and their lives with a great deal of humor and abysmal tragedy.

The novel was congenially adapted to film in 2008 by Sam Mendes with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. The film won numerous awards, including the Golden Globe Award for best actress for Kate Winslet, who paid tribute to the author in her acceptance speech for creating such a strong female character.