First Book of 2009

Is Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.

I started reading this one last night, and I'm about 1/2 way through (I couldn't sleep!)

This novel seems to be a kind of satire on the 50s Stepford Wives concept of suburbia. Frank, the husband, seems to see marital love as a construct of his perception...he 'loves' therefore April, his wife, does too.

April is a frustrated character, not knowing familial love in the basic sense of the word (she was passed from relative to relative, with few and far between visits from an alcoholic mother and a wandering father) and not relating to Frank's concept of love either, but stuck in the marriage by the two children that neither of them really wanted.

I have a sense of foreboding already. I don't think this will end well :(