Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Revolutionary Road: What a Miserable Book That Was.

Ok, so i've mentioned being a consumer whore recently, but I haven't confessed to a slightly less shameful charecter trait. I'm also a book whore.

I was that weird girl in school who really liked to read. In middle school I woud read while in line to the cafeteria for lunch like Belle in Beauty and The Beast. Then I read through lunch. (Easy to do when you don't have many freinds.) In high school I finished reading A Separate Peace in one day because I was bored on the bus and hey! Look! A book! Once I get into a book I can finish it in no time. I'm also susceptable to suggestion and if I hear a book is good I end up dying to read it. This usually ends with me ordering the book from Amazon since I haven't been to the library since last summer when someone got stabbed in front of the building at the exact time that I would have been there. (For realz! Someone got stabbed in front of the library at 3:15 in the afternoon. Right between leaving work and going home. So i'm a little gun shy. Or knife shy.)

Anyway...

So around the time that Revolutionary Road came out in theatres there were articles about the book and how people just loved it and how it was so good so like a good little book whore I ordered it from Amazon. (I would like to note that I was careful not to buy the movie tie in version with Leo and Kate on the cover and then to peel off the Now A Major Motion Picture sticker that was on it. That shit annoys me.)

I guess the book was good enough. I was well written and all, but I really didn't like it.

First of all, call me an asshole, but I'm easily annoyed at movies, books, TV shows etc. about the drudgery and ennui and desparation of the suburbs. Like it's the MOST AWFUL THING EVER to live inbetween the city and the country. Maybe i'm a weirdo, but I like my life in the suburbs. I like having a yard and an attic and only being five minutes away from several restaraunts and stores. I like the quiet of my neighborhood, and knowing that if my house catches on fire in the middle of the day someone walking their dog or cutting their grass will be there to call the fire department. And that the fire department will know where i'm at since i'm not in the middle of nowhere. Not to hate on the city or the country. I'm sure they have their charms for those who choose to live there. But I chose to live in the suburbs so can we all just accept that and stop looking at us suburbunites like we're empty losers filled with longing and dark secrets already? And honestly, if Frank and April were so damn miserable in the 'burbs why not move back to the city? Jeez.

Of course, even if they had either stayed in the city to start with or moved back or even (spoiler alert) made it to Paris I don't think things would have turned out differently for them.

And that brings me to the second reason I really didn't like this book. There wasn't a remotely likeable charecter in it. (I'm not counting the kids, they were such minor charecters they don't really count.)

Frank and April are crappy people. Their freinds are crappy people. Their real estate agent and her family are crappy people. They are all so empty, but they don't really do anything to fill this emptiness. They don't really talk to their loved ones. They don't listen to them. They don't try to make their lives meaningful where they are now. They just go about their lives waiting and expecting the outside world to fill them up. They're selfish assholes.

Why are they selfish assholes? We don't really know. And that's probablly where the book disappointed me the most. I wanted to know why. Why did Frank and April get married in the first place? Why did they hate each other so much? Did that develop slowly? Was it a sudden thing that happened? What the hell? Can I get some insight into this please?

Maybe i'm missing something here, but I wasn't really impressed. I'll be listing my copy on Paper Back Swap and hoping to get a better book in return. And maybe next time instead of dropping $10 on a book I may not like i'll brave the library.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Somebody got stabbed in front of the library?! Good Lord!

I've been needing some books that I can't find up here in Granville County. I was going to ask you or Bigsy if I could possibly get the books from your library, but now I'm afraid.

I wanted to see that movie, but I didn't know that it was a book.

::hugs::