Richard Yates Livres

Long Island, fin des années 1930. Evan Shepard, séduisant fils d'un officier en retraite et d'une mère névrosée, épouse Mary, une lycéenne enceinte après une soirée au drive-in. Bien qu'il soit un mécanicien prometteur, Evan manque d'ambition, tandis que Mary aspire à l'université et à devenir un "être à part entière". Leur mariage échoue rapidement, entraînant un divorce. Quelques années plus tard, Evan rencontre Rachel Drake, douce et vertueuse, en parfaite opposition à Mary. Fille d'une mère hystérique et sœur d'un adolescent complexe, Rachel et Evan se marient, comblant leurs désirs mutuels. Ils sont désargentés mais heureux, louant un appartement loin de leurs familles. Evan envisage de reprendre ses études pour devenir ingénieur. Cependant, leur insouciance est perturbée par l'éclatement de la guerre et la grossesse inattendue de Rachel. Gloria, la mère de Rachel, propose de partager une maison à Cold Spring, où résident également les Shepard. Ce cadre devient le théâtre des désillusions de ce groupe hétéroclite, réunissant des personnalités mal assorties et alcoolisées, durant un été en 1942.

The literary event of 2001 is now the paperback event of 2002: The Collected Stories of Richard Yates gathers the late author's powerful and peerless short fiction in one comprehensive volume. Praised by such authors as Michael Chabon, Stewart O'Nan, Robert Stone, and Richard Russo, and universally acclaimed in reviews across the country, The Collected Stories is the crowning jewel in what has been the rediscovery of one of our greatest American writers.

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

Follows forty years in the lives of two sisters, victims of divorced, neglectful parents, as they develop into different kinds of women.

Emily looks up to her wiser and more stable older sister and is jealous of her relationship with their absent father, and later her seemingly golden marriage. Although the bond between them endures, gradually the distance between the two women grows, until a tragic event throws their relationship into focus one last time.

First published in 1962, a year after Revolutionary Road, this sublime collection of stories seems even more powerful today. Out of the lives of Manhattan office workers, a cab driver seeking immortality, frustrated would-be novelists, suburban men and their yearning, neglected women, Richard Yates creates a haunting mosaic of the 1950s, the era when the American dream was finally coming true - and just beginning to ring a little hollow.

With his second collection of short stories, Richard Yates continues to extend his range as a writer of stunning power and eloquence.

The acclaimed author of Revolutionary Road—one of the most important writers of the twentieth century—movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship and marriage in the 1950s to their divorce in the 70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II Europe, and at first he and his new wife Lucy enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates an oppressive fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation. With empathy and grace, Yates creates a poignant novel of the desires and disasters of a tragic, hopeful couple.

Bobby is eighteen and lost on the battlefields of Europe, stumbling his way through World War II. Back home, his mother Alice puts all her hopes in her son, and dreams of his return and starting a new life for them both.

Richard Yates, who died in 1992, is today ranked by many readers, scholars, and critics alongside such titans of modern American ficiton as Updike, Roth, Irving, Vonnegut, and Mailer.In this work, he offers a spare and autumnal novel about a New England prep school. At once a meditation on the twilight of youth and an examination of America's entry into World War II, A Good School tells the stories of William Grove, the quiet boy who becomes an editor of the school newspaper; Jack Draper, a crippled chemistry teacher; and Edith Stone, the schoolmaster's young daughter, who falls in love with most celebrated boy in the class of 1943.