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Title: The Easter Parade : A Novel by Richard Yates ISBN: 0-312-27828-4 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 04 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Gripping and poignant, but overly fatalistic
Comment: This sad and beautifully written novel about the relationship of two sisters from their girlhood in the 1930s to middle age in the 1970s gets under your skin, sometimes almost in spite of itself.
What I found most effective were the characterizations (among the most interesting are their gentle, alcoholic dad, as well as the rather creepy academic Andrew Crawford and the blocked poet Jack Flanders - Yates is particularly good at self-hating intellectuals); the author's graceful and seemingly effortless prose; and the overarching mood of Chekhov-like melancholy empathy that is quite poignant.
I think the major flaw is Yates' overly fatalistic conception of his characters and their lives. I just couldn't buy the idea that Emily - a woman who, after all, got an education and pursued a career in the 40s and 50s, a time when it took a great deal of personal strength to resist "the feminine mystique" - would be so unbelievably passive, both at work and in her personal life.
Throughout the book, she's basically unhappy, and near the end, she has a total meltdown. Yet not until the final pages does she make any attempt to help herself. But long before that, wouldn't she, at the very least, have gone into psychoanalysis? After all, it was what people of that class and that era DID!
Nevertheless, this book has undeniable power. I thought the ending was wonderfully handled. By that time Emily is in enormous pain, but Yates shows you the faintest glimmer of light shining through the darkness. Given the unremitting bleakness of so much of this book, the possibility of redemption - however qualified - is welcome, because its adds depth and complexity to the occasionally unearned despair of Yates' vision.
Rating: 5
Summary: Less Is More
Comment: Having recently finished Revolutionary Road (and loving every page of it), I picked up The Easter Parade. People have told me that it was a better book than Rev Road, to which I thought: "How could it possibly surpass it?"
It does, and does so without much fanfare. EP is a quieter book than RR, and initially that quietness let me down. It was missing RR's raw energy, that relentless, menacing, racing-to-a-head-on-collision-at-90-mph feeling, maybe because so much time passes in this thin novel -- a good forty years. But as I got to the last page and ruminated on Emily Grimes' and her family's tragic lives, I realized that EP is the better book because it doesn't do anything too spectacular (the ending of RR could be seen as a bit melodramatic, especially after EP).
After finishing it, I flipped through the pages again and again, admiring these heartbreaking passages strewn throughout. I was amazed at how much time does indeed pass in about two hundred pages, and yet not for a second did I feel like I was getting a Reader's Digest version of Emily's life. Yates marvelously intersperses perfect quick scenes in between summarizations, never making it boring.
Unlike RR, EP doesn't have any cartoonish supporting characters. Everyone in this book is real. Their pain is real, especially Emily's. You will learn to care for her, even when she's doing something horrifyingly stupid or cruel, or perhaps because of it. Her faults are our own; they belong to all of us.
Rating: 5
Summary: She was always misunderstood
Comment: "Easter Parade" follows sisters, Emily and Sarah Grimes, over forty years. They enter adulthood during WWII, and their lives follow tremendously different trajectories. Sarah is the traditional one: she marries early, has three children, and settles into a seemingly idyllic life in the countryside. Emily is more independent, and she experiences a series of unsatisfying intimate relationships and drifts through life. The novel chiefly concerns the relationship, or lack thereof, between the sisters and their family. The story climaxes in the 1960's with mild invocations of the women's liberation movement, and Yates draws clear parallels between the sisters and their times. Although the time period is specific, the characters remain amazingly relatable and universal.
The most exceptional aspect of Yates's writing is the effortlessness with which he encapsulates life: "The Easter Parade" is a relatively short novel - yet it's remarkably complete due to Yates's talent in creating scenes that so clearly recapitulate a particular period in the sisters' lives. Yates is best-known for his brilliant debut, "Revolutionary Road." His subsequent novels have received considerably less acclaim - an untenable situation considering the quality and exquisiteness of his writing. With "The Easter Parade" the story is simple but heart-breaking; the characters are unforgettable; the final epiphany is indisputable. Most highly recommended.
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Title: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates ISBN: 0375708448 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 25 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Good School: A Novel by Richard Yates ISBN: 0312420390 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: A Special Providence : A Novel by Richard Yates ISBN: 0312420404 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 03 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates ISBN: 0385295960 Publisher: Delta Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 01 September, 1987 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates ISBN: 0312420811 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 03 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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