U is for Underrated Authors

I guess it really is true that many authors don’t get recognition until after they’re dead. Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe—all writers and poets who were not recognized until years after their deaths.

One of my favorite authors is Richard Yates. Yates died in 1992 leaving behind an impressive array of novels including Revolutionary Road (made into a movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio in 2007). Most of his plots are domestic dramas addressing marital difficulties, infidelities, and miscommunications. With devastating and powerful honesty, Yates writes of ordinary people with common problems using compelling characters and realistic dialogue. Often the characters are lonely and misguided, desperately seeking some way to make their lives work while caught in a quagmire of self-inflicted pain or unfortunate circumstances of fate.

It is unusual for me to read a book more than once, but I read Revolutionary Road once a year in an attempt to absorb Yates’s intelligent writing style. I believe Revolutionary Road is his best work; however, Young Hearts Crying, The Easter Parade, and Liars in Love are similar in scope and style and certainly worth reading.