Heartbreakingly Honest

The vivid detail, the wise psychological analysis woven through a compelling narrative, l savoured every sentence.
The narrator was excellent.

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Powerful story of failure of American Dream

A brilliant narrator who brought alive the characters make and female but also the dark humour in this disturbing story of a failing and tragic marriage in 1950s America.

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Nightmare in a town with no Air Conditioning

The forthcoming film adaptation by Sam Mendes starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo Leonardo DiCaprio seemed an intriguing substantial follow up to his earlier American Beauty ? so a good starting off point to read the book before seeing the film. The previously unknown Richard Yates is a welcome addition to the cannon of American baby boom angst-generation. This territory has in recent years has been wrestled from the New Yorker writers and East Coast sensitivities of John Updike to become almost the domain of the TV writer and slightly off the wall film makers ? like David Lynch, who relocated the action to the West Coast - or the late Southern Gothics like Tracey Letts who gave us a freaked-out speed-addled version of Tennessee Williams.

Here the action is plainly suburban, Connecticut compliance and Eisenhower domesticity ? and the great escape of this 1950s world is a relocatoin to post war Paris.

There are so many contemporary parallels and yet it seems a different world. The male-bonded corporate boys club in which Frank Wheeler is ensconced just about still exists in our Finance sector. We are now just about ten years too late to see it in the American Corporations who have now outsourced their bonhomie and business lunches ? but it was there and Yates? un-air conditioned mid-town lunch with Bart Pollack is as close as contemporary fiction gets.

April Wheeler?s 1950s housewife is now a dream ? but all the more powerful in our popular contemporary property, cookery, celebrity driven representations and probably more real than ever. But the inter-dependence of the married couple has now gone and we have become atomised beyond consideration of the single young man ? John Givings ? who provides the touchstone of this novel.

Our relationships are what define us and good writing is what defines a good novel. Yates? observations are accurate, there is insight and terror in what he sees and, yes, this is a great book.

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wonderfully observed characters

I think that Richard Yates must be the reincarnation of Edith Wharton! The same sharp knowledge of human nature, personality and the claustrophobic influence of the social milieu, wonderfully observed.

?He closed the door and started toward her with the corners of his mouth stretched tight in a look that he hoped would be full of love and humor and compassion; what he planned to do was bend down and kiss her and say 'Listen: you were wonderful.' But an almost imperceptible recoil of her shoulders told him that she didn't want to be touched, which left him uncertain what to do with his hands, and that was when it occurred to him that 'You were wonderful' might be exactly the wrong thing to say ? condescending, or at the very least naive and sentimental, and much too serious.
'Well,' he said instead. 'I guess it wasn't exactly a triumph or anything, was it?' And he stuck a cigarette jauntily in his lips and lit it with a flourish of his clicking Zippo.
'I guess not,' she said. 'I'll be ready in a minute.'
'No, that's okay, take your time.'
He pocketed both hands and curled the tired toes inside his shoes, looking down at them. Would 'You were wonderful' have been a better thing to say, after all? Almost anything, it now seemed, would have been a better thing to say than what he'd said. But he would have to think of better things to say later; right now it was all he could do to stand here and think about the double bourbon he would have when they stopped on the way home with the Campbells. He looked at himself in the mirror, tightening his jaw and turning his head a little to one side to give it a leaner, more commanding look, the face he had given himself in mirrors since boyhood and which no photograph had ever quite achieved, until with a start he found that she was watching him. Her own eyes were there in the mirror, trained on his for an uncomfortable moment before she lowered them to stare at the middle button of his coat.?

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Thought provoking on ordinary life

Was recommended this by my daughter studying it for A level. So great to share a good book and share thoughts from different perspectives on the characters. I'm much more forgiving of the Wheelers because to me imperfection is normal and natural. It's still as current today as it must have been back then, though there are now more ways to avoid working efficiently and make illicit friendships.

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Brilliant finishing

It took a while to get going but stick with it as the plot gets better and then it's a case of not wanting to stop listening!

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Absolute Must!

Undoubtedly the most underrated writer I have ever had the pleasure of reading!

The minute observations Yates presents in this novel are devastating and honest. A timeless tale.

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An intolerably dense novel made bearable by audibl

This novel is criminally overwritten and bland but the narration and performance made it a somewhat enjoyable experience. A book I would never choose to read (MA reading list) so thank the lord for audible coming to the rescue.

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Great narration, great book!

Really enjoyed this book. If you’re interested in 1950s America and the struggles with forced conformity and suburbia of the time, then I’d recommend reading this. Thought that the reader did a great job of getting the emotion out.

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Haunting.

Loved the story and the descriptions were potent but not too long. Time for my next classic literature choice.

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