Revolutionary Road (book versus movie)

Husband picked this book up for me at the library last week when he was there to pick up Harry Potter audio books for himself. It was a nice surprise.

After we watch a non-comedy movie we usually talk about it for days and days. But with Revolutionary Road I felt there wasn't as much to discuss because there just wasn't as much.

We'd just watched the movie and really felt like I didn't know enough about the character to understand their motivations for making the decisions they did. Why did Frank Wheeler do this? What possessed April Wheeler to make that decision? And there HAS to be more to John Givings than the movie gave me.

I really appreciated the extra character development (I shouldn't say extra since he wrote the book about 50 years before the movie was made) from the book.

Things twisted out longer and more elaborately as they tend to do in books as opposed to the movie produced for the masses.

I enjoyed the extra details about Maureen that the movie omitted. But I think that was intentional to make Frank seem more like the "good guy" and April the "bad guy" That's how she came across to me in the movie. selfish. I understood her more after reading the book. sympathized with her.

If you've read the book but haven't seen the movie - don't bother. Unless you just want to see Jack and Rose reunited in a mostly unhappy marriage. All the major dialog in the movie is practically word for word from the book. That was a little boring to drudge through.

And the book ending was a little more sad than the movie ending. Same ending. Just a little more details in the book. Sad real life story.

I added a "I'm reading" tab to the sidebar. Hopefully that'll help me remember to at least jot a few sentences about what I'm reading.

(btw, if you haven't read Devil in the White City by Erik Larson --- I recommend it. I read mostly fiction and Husband reads mostly nonfiction and he recommended it and thought it would be something I would enjoy)