What do you think?
Rate this book
The Easter Parade
In The Easter Parade , first published in 1976, we meet sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes when they are still the children of divorced parents. We observe the sisters over four decades, watching them grow into two very different women. Sarah is stable and stalwart, settling into an unhappy marriage. Emily is precocious and independent, struggling with one unsatisfactory love affair after another. Richard Yates's classic novel is about how both women struggle to overcome their tarnished family's past, and how both finally reach for some semblance of renewal.
229 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
195 people are currently reading
12168 people want to read
About the author
Richard Yates
65 books2,271 followersRichard Yates shone bright upon the publication of his first novel, Revolutionary Road, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 1961. It drew unbridled praise and branded Yates an important, new writer. Kurt Vonnegut claimed that Revolutionary Road was The Great Gatsby of his time. William Styron described it as "A deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic." Tennessee Williams went one further and said, "Here is more than fine writing; here is what, added to fine writing, makes a book come immediately, intensely, and brilliantly alive. If more is needed to make a masterpiece in modern American fiction, I am sure I don't know what it is."
In 1962 Eleven Kinds of Loneliness was published, his first collection of short stories. It too had praise heaped upon it. Kurt Vonnegut said it was "the best short-story collection ever written by an American."
Yates' writing skills were further utilized when, upon returning from Los Angeles, he began working as a speechwriter for then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy until the assassination of JFK. From there he moved onto Iowa where, as a creative writing teacher, he would influence and inspire writers such as Andre Dubus and Dewitt Henry.
His third novel, Disturbing the Peace, was published in 1975. Perhaps his second most well-known novel, The Easter Parade, was published in 1976. The story follows the lives of the Grimes sisters and ends in typical Yatesian fashion, replicating the disappointed lives of Revolutionary Road.
However, Yates began to find himself as a writer cut adrift in a sea fast turning towards postmodernism; yet, he would stay true to realism. His heroes and influences remained the classics of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flaubert and short-story master, Chekov.
It was to his school and army days that Richard turned to for his next novel, A Good School, which was quickly followed by his second collection of short stories, Liars in Love. Young Hearts Crying emerged in 1984 followed two years later with Cold Spring Harbour, which would prove to be his final completed novel.
Like the fate of his hero, Flaubert, whose novel Madame Bovary influenced Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade, Richard Yates' works are enjoying a posthumous renaissance, attracting newly devoted fans across the Atlantic and beyond.
In 1962 Eleven Kinds of Loneliness was published, his first collection of short stories. It too had praise heaped upon it. Kurt Vonnegut said it was "the best short-story collection ever written by an American."
Yates' writing skills were further utilized when, upon returning from Los Angeles, he began working as a speechwriter for then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy until the assassination of JFK. From there he moved onto Iowa where, as a creative writing teacher, he would influence and inspire writers such as Andre Dubus and Dewitt Henry.
His third novel, Disturbing the Peace, was published in 1975. Perhaps his second most well-known novel, The Easter Parade, was published in 1976. The story follows the lives of the Grimes sisters and ends in typical Yatesian fashion, replicating the disappointed lives of Revolutionary Road.
However, Yates began to find himself as a writer cut adrift in a sea fast turning towards postmodernism; yet, he would stay true to realism. His heroes and influences remained the classics of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flaubert and short-story master, Chekov.
It was to his school and army days that Richard turned to for his next novel, A Good School, which was quickly followed by his second collection of short stories, Liars in Love. Young Hearts Crying emerged in 1984 followed two years later with Cold Spring Harbour, which would prove to be his final completed novel.
Like the fate of his hero, Flaubert, whose novel Madame Bovary influenced Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade, Richard Yates' works are enjoying a posthumous renaissance, attracting newly devoted fans across the Atlantic and beyond.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,098 reviews
November 5, 2025
The Easter Parade starts with a warning…
Their estranged father was at the bottom of the newspaper journalism… And their mother was going out of her way to be decorous… Girls grow up moving from place to place… The older sister is down to earth and the younger one is dreamy… Now there is war… The elder one gets married and the younger sister is awarded a scholarship to college… And she turns into a promiscuous intellectual…
Troubles… Always troubles for both sisters…
If you have nothing else you can still have pretensions.
Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce. That happened in 1930, when Sarah was nine years old and Emily five. Their mother, who encouraged both girls to call her “Pookie,” took them out of New York to a rented house in Tenafly, New Jersey, where she thought the schools would be better and where she hoped to launch a career in suburban real estate.
Their estranged father was at the bottom of the newspaper journalism… And their mother was going out of her way to be decorous… Girls grow up moving from place to place… The older sister is down to earth and the younger one is dreamy… Now there is war… The elder one gets married and the younger sister is awarded a scholarship to college… And she turns into a promiscuous intellectual…
She knew she was awake because she could see morning light in the pale floating shape of a closed Venetian blind, far away. It wasn’t a dream: she was lying naked in bed with a strange man, in a strange place, with no memory of the night before… It was the summer of 1961, and she was thirty-six.
Troubles… Always troubles for both sisters…
If you have nothing else you can still have pretensions.
January 5, 2025
Had someone passed me a copy of The Easter Parade without me knowing who wrote it, I would have come to two conclusions after finishing. It was either written by a depressed female writer, or if not, then Richard Yates, in fact the very first sentence of "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life", basically gave the game away. I can imagine him sat there, with alcohol running through his veins, ready to inflict more downheartedness upon the literary world. And if there is one thing with Yates, he never strays away from his themes of misery, abandonment and the stark evocation of the middle class living unfulfilled lives.
This was my forth novel from Mr Yates, and although it didn't hit the heights of either "Revolutionary Road" or the short-story collection "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" (I believe to be his masterpiece), any fan would find this most readable. And yes, it is a painfully sad piece of writing, that gives you hope one minute, only to drag you down into the depths of despair the next. But that's what he does, and does so well, as with the old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I only wish it was read predominantly during a torrential downpour, rather than an early warm summers day.
Much of the story is told with Yates’s simple, matter-of-fact style, he relates to the characters in a no-thrills way, and nails people with just a few words spoken. Two sisters, Emily & Sarah Grimes are the leading ladies and both are looked at over the years, from youth to middle age, but not in a 'under the microscope' kind of way, because with Yates, he skims over the joys of motherhood, Aunthood, love, and friendship that punctuate life, and goes full tilt at the nasty stuff, wife-beaters, psychiatric hospitals, drunkenness, and heartbreak. Only rarely does he seem to have taken a happy pill, but generally it's gloom, dreams flutter and die.
Set in his usual stomping ground of New York City and Long Island, sisters Emily and Sarah would have a bittersweet childhood, giddy with the promise that life holds, but learn all too soon that things are no bed of roses, that the the world does indeed contain physically and emotionally cruel people, both yearn for affection, success but also escape. Bleak as it is, hats off to Yates, as he manages to make the novel not only readable but also enthralling, and is a solid testament to his capacity as a great storyteller. And less does mean more, his pared-down style and conscious absence of literary complexities results in story-telling that is simultaneously easy to digest, with each page flowing like a river out to sea, even if it does lead to stormy waters.
Growing up with their flighty, deluded mother (who they call Pookie), both girls would suffer in the absence of their father, Sarah embraces conventionality and settles down early for what she hopes is an idyllic life, Emily seems distant but more independant; she gets the sex before marriage and decides she rather likes it, so casual relationships are her thing, at least to begin with. But long-term happiness is elusive for both sisters. they keep in touch, but slowly drift apart, and their sisterly stature is as complex as siblings can be, both are in there own way partly jealous of each the other. Sarah would have three boys with her thuggish husband Tony, while with Emily it appears to be just one failure after another, men would come and go, and leave her burdening loneliness.
Huge moments in life are covered, but touched ever so lightly, this works well though, as we are not spoon-fed all the necessiities, leaving the reader to contemplate, with Yates’s refusal to give into sentimentality undoubtedly his greatest skill. The Easter Parade is a miserable read, no denying that, but is also very moving in places, the middle of Sarah's Sons is a ray of light through the darkness, and reaches out to Emily in a time of need towards the end.
I felt deeply for both the Grimes sisters, and rooted for each of them at different times during their difficult lives, whilst also being reminded that nothing changes the misery without our own desire to make the changes happen.
January 19, 2024
STORIE ORDINARIE DI TRANQUILLA DISPERAZIONE
Tutte le foto sono del fotografo israeliano Liron Kroll dedicate al romanzo di Yates.
C’era una volta una coppia di sorelle, Sarah ed Emily: la prima aveva 9 anni quando nel 1930 i suoi divorziarono – e quella era un’epoca in cui neppure nei moderni Stati Uniti il divorzio era così comune, specie se proprio a causa di quello ti trasferivano da New York al New Jersey – mentre la più piccola ne aveva cinque.
Yates ci racconta la loro storia, più o meno dal principio alla fine. Lo fa con rara maestria, con una scrittura così piacevole, efficace, elegante, cesellata ma senza orpelli, divertente: in sole poco più di duecentocinquanta pagine quattro decenni della vita di entrambe sono narrati senza buchi, e con abbondanza di dettagli.
E insieme alla vita delle due sorelle quelle di chi gli ruota intorno, mamma papà colleghi mariti amanti figli.
E insieme a quelle, la vita di ogni lettore, sicuramente la mia.
Con grande piacere di lettura: sono rimasto rapito dalla sua abilità di racconto, dalla lucidità e chiarezza della costruzione, dal ritmo che senza accelerazioni non subisce mai neppure rallentamenti. Una danza. Mai letta una tragedia più comica di questa. Ah, che bello.
L’occhio di Yates indugia più a lungo sulla sorella minore che ha una vita più movimentata, è lei il punto d’osservazione. D’altronde, la prima si sposa presto, fa tre figli, e sembra sufficientemente contenta. Almeno fino a che viene fuori che…
Emily, invece, è più inquieta. Il suo matrimonio, nato in circostanze quasi surreali e che coinvolgeva un marito più assurdo che surreale, dura meno di un anno. Quando riceve la proposta per le seconde nozze, scappa. E presto si risveglia in un letto, in una casa, accanto a un uomo, e niente le è familiare, non riconosce nulla e nessuno. Yates ci dice che il numero di uomini con cui passa la notte è lungo e tende ad allungarsi sempre più. Ma risparmia sia a se stesso che ai lettori qualsiasi giudizio morale: Emily cerca di vivere meglio che può nel solo modo che conosce, tutto qui. A Emmy non importa cosa pensano gli altri, è indipendente e fa di testa sua: dice di lei Sarah che le vuole bene e la ammira. Emily vuole bene a Sarah, ma certo non l’ammira. Come non ammira neppure sua madre.
Tutti fumano, così tanto che starebbero male anche se le sigarette non facessero male. Altrettanto dicasi per l’alcol: birra e vino economico – perché la California non ha ancora cominciato a produrre con la quantità e la qualità a venire – ma soprattutto superalcolici, di mattina, prima e durante il pranzo, nel pomeriggio, prima durante e dopo cena: spesso si ha l’impressione che comportamenti ed emozioni siano modificati, se non addirittura determinati, dal tasso alcolico.
La vita è dura, la vita è difficile. Anche se si vuole abbracciare il credo a stelle-e-strisce che basta volere e si arriva dove si vuole, che là fuori c’è un mondo da conquistare, basta volerlo e andare sempre avanti. Il tipico (diabetico) sentimentalismo ottimista americano – che Norman Rockwell ha saputo catturare così bene nelle sue illustrazioni – non potrebbe trovare cantore più antagonista: Richard Yates racconta tragedia in forma quasi buffa, ma restano tragedie, l’happy ending non fa certo parte dei suoi strumenti letterari.
La processione pasquale, la parata di pasqua indicata dal titolo viene accennata un paio di volte, ma mai descritta davvero, rimane di sfondo. Eppure è metafora dell’intero libro: si affronta la vita come se fosse una sfilata, si parte in parata pimpanti e festosi – ma, man mano arriva la stanchezza, il sudore, il trucco cola, si scioglie, la maschera cade, la verità viene a galla. Le due sorelle hanno provato ciascuna a modo suo: molto più tradizionale la maggiore, all’opposto, protofemminista la minore – ma falliscono entrambe, nessuna delle due raggiunge la felicità. La solitudine è il premio finale (già sottotraccia alla partenza).
Ora mi rimane da capire se questo è perfino più bello di quello considerato il vero capolavoro di Yates, Revolutionary Road.
Né l’una né l’altra delle sorelle Grimes avrebbe avuto una vita felice, e a ripensarci si aveva sempre l’impressione che i guai fossero cominciati con il divorzio dei loro genitori.
Tutte le foto sono del fotografo israeliano Liron Kroll dedicate al romanzo di Yates.
C’era una volta una coppia di sorelle, Sarah ed Emily: la prima aveva 9 anni quando nel 1930 i suoi divorziarono – e quella era un’epoca in cui neppure nei moderni Stati Uniti il divorzio era così comune, specie se proprio a causa di quello ti trasferivano da New York al New Jersey – mentre la più piccola ne aveva cinque.
Yates ci racconta la loro storia, più o meno dal principio alla fine. Lo fa con rara maestria, con una scrittura così piacevole, efficace, elegante, cesellata ma senza orpelli, divertente: in sole poco più di duecentocinquanta pagine quattro decenni della vita di entrambe sono narrati senza buchi, e con abbondanza di dettagli.
E insieme alla vita delle due sorelle quelle di chi gli ruota intorno, mamma papà colleghi mariti amanti figli.
E insieme a quelle, la vita di ogni lettore, sicuramente la mia.
Con grande piacere di lettura: sono rimasto rapito dalla sua abilità di racconto, dalla lucidità e chiarezza della costruzione, dal ritmo che senza accelerazioni non subisce mai neppure rallentamenti. Una danza. Mai letta una tragedia più comica di questa. Ah, che bello.
L’occhio di Yates indugia più a lungo sulla sorella minore che ha una vita più movimentata, è lei il punto d’osservazione. D’altronde, la prima si sposa presto, fa tre figli, e sembra sufficientemente contenta. Almeno fino a che viene fuori che…
Emily, invece, è più inquieta. Il suo matrimonio, nato in circostanze quasi surreali e che coinvolgeva un marito più assurdo che surreale, dura meno di un anno. Quando riceve la proposta per le seconde nozze, scappa. E presto si risveglia in un letto, in una casa, accanto a un uomo, e niente le è familiare, non riconosce nulla e nessuno. Yates ci dice che il numero di uomini con cui passa la notte è lungo e tende ad allungarsi sempre più. Ma risparmia sia a se stesso che ai lettori qualsiasi giudizio morale: Emily cerca di vivere meglio che può nel solo modo che conosce, tutto qui. A Emmy non importa cosa pensano gli altri, è indipendente e fa di testa sua: dice di lei Sarah che le vuole bene e la ammira. Emily vuole bene a Sarah, ma certo non l’ammira. Come non ammira neppure sua madre.
Tutti fumano, così tanto che starebbero male anche se le sigarette non facessero male. Altrettanto dicasi per l’alcol: birra e vino economico – perché la California non ha ancora cominciato a produrre con la quantità e la qualità a venire – ma soprattutto superalcolici, di mattina, prima e durante il pranzo, nel pomeriggio, prima durante e dopo cena: spesso si ha l’impressione che comportamenti ed emozioni siano modificati, se non addirittura determinati, dal tasso alcolico.
La vita è dura, la vita è difficile. Anche se si vuole abbracciare il credo a stelle-e-strisce che basta volere e si arriva dove si vuole, che là fuori c’è un mondo da conquistare, basta volerlo e andare sempre avanti. Il tipico (diabetico) sentimentalismo ottimista americano – che Norman Rockwell ha saputo catturare così bene nelle sue illustrazioni – non potrebbe trovare cantore più antagonista: Richard Yates racconta tragedia in forma quasi buffa, ma restano tragedie, l’happy ending non fa certo parte dei suoi strumenti letterari.
La processione pasquale, la parata di pasqua indicata dal titolo viene accennata un paio di volte, ma mai descritta davvero, rimane di sfondo. Eppure è metafora dell’intero libro: si affronta la vita come se fosse una sfilata, si parte in parata pimpanti e festosi – ma, man mano arriva la stanchezza, il sudore, il trucco cola, si scioglie, la maschera cade, la verità viene a galla. Le due sorelle hanno provato ciascuna a modo suo: molto più tradizionale la maggiore, all’opposto, protofemminista la minore – ma falliscono entrambe, nessuna delle due raggiunge la felicità. La solitudine è il premio finale (già sottotraccia alla partenza).
Ora mi rimane da capire se questo è perfino più bello di quello considerato il vero capolavoro di Yates, Revolutionary Road.
Né l’una né l’altra delle sorelle Grimes avrebbe avuto una vita felice, e a ripensarci si aveva sempre l’impressione che i guai fossero cominciati con il divorzio dei loro genitori.
September 1, 2024
My third time reading The Easter Parade and every time I do I love it more. It is a work of quiet and understated perfection. Yates's fourth novel, it was the first of his novels I ever finished reading only to be left craving something—what?—more. This is no longer the case. Subjects such as as divorce, alcoholism, psychoanalysis, academia, and even erectile dysfunction crop up again in Yates's fiction, but what I love about this particulr novel is that it doesn't dwell in the way that some of his other novels do. Yates moves us swiftly through the lives of sisters Sarah and Emily—mainly Emily, Sarah through Emily—much as we would page through a photo album. Sarah and Emily go see where their father works, Sarah gives birth to one child, two children, three children, Emily goes to Europe with a man, and then moves on. Yates uses Emily's relationships with men to move the story forward and would do this again in Young Hearts Crying. He offers us snapshots which collectively add up to something beautiful and bleak and sad and spectacular.
April 11, 2025
Great writing makes me happy. What can I say? And Richard Yates' writing here is great. The story isn't happy, but many stories worth reading aren't, because, well my dears, that's life -- and complex stories with flawed people and tragic outcomes can be so rich, and can help us feel less alone.
So I read this story about two sisters who, the author tells us in the very first sentence, "would never have a happy life", and I was brought to tears, but at the same time, was happy. Happy because Richard Yates' art is so alive, even with its broken heart and its arrhythmia and its diseased liver. Happy because he understood the human condition so well, and its failings. Happy to see my occasional despair mirrored back at me with deep understanding. Happy that a man can write from the female point of view with such sensitivity. Happy that in a world full of mad idiocy, incomprehensible and terrifying in its unwarranted aggression, and grounded in zero intelligence or goodwill, Richard Yates exists to say: "I know. It's unbearable, isn't it?"
Relationships are so difficult, as everyone knows. In a Yates novel, they are particularly lonely and ultimately disappointing. Sarah, the older sister, hangs a photo on her wall, a photo of herself with the man who would eventually become her husband, both of them young and hopeful at the Easter Parade. Sarah, who is good at quietly tolerating pain. Emmy, the younger sister who takes a different path than a conventional married life, finds herself serially let down.
I like to let the light seep in through the cracks more than Yates does, because otherwise I'd drink myself to oblivion like many of his poor characters. But I look at his work, and it has such a ring of authenticity to it. I read his stories about lonely people and somehow I feel less lonely. That's the power of great writing.
So I read this story about two sisters who, the author tells us in the very first sentence, "would never have a happy life", and I was brought to tears, but at the same time, was happy. Happy because Richard Yates' art is so alive, even with its broken heart and its arrhythmia and its diseased liver. Happy because he understood the human condition so well, and its failings. Happy to see my occasional despair mirrored back at me with deep understanding. Happy that a man can write from the female point of view with such sensitivity. Happy that in a world full of mad idiocy, incomprehensible and terrifying in its unwarranted aggression, and grounded in zero intelligence or goodwill, Richard Yates exists to say: "I know. It's unbearable, isn't it?"
Relationships are so difficult, as everyone knows. In a Yates novel, they are particularly lonely and ultimately disappointing. Sarah, the older sister, hangs a photo on her wall, a photo of herself with the man who would eventually become her husband, both of them young and hopeful at the Easter Parade. Sarah, who is good at quietly tolerating pain. Emmy, the younger sister who takes a different path than a conventional married life, finds herself serially let down.
I like to let the light seep in through the cracks more than Yates does, because otherwise I'd drink myself to oblivion like many of his poor characters. But I look at his work, and it has such a ring of authenticity to it. I read his stories about lonely people and somehow I feel less lonely. That's the power of great writing.
November 27, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
No sé ustedes, pero yo —y al parecer también Yates— soy de la opinión de que la felicidad es fundamentalmente una cuestión de predisposici��n.
“Ninguna de las hermanas Grimes estaba destinada a ser feliz, y al echar una mirada retrospectiva siempre da la impresión de que los problemas comenzaron con el divorcio de sus padres”
Esa predisposición nos asigna un intervalo concreto dentro de la línea de puntos que une la felicidad y la infelicidad. Las circunstancias serán las que fijarán los puntos de ese intervalo que iremos ocupando a lo largo de nuestra vida, existiendo también momentos en los que condiciones especiales nos sitúen por un instante en puntos alejados de aquellos que nos reservó el destino.
Para Sarah, una de las hermanas Grimes, uno de esos momentos puntuales se alcanzó un día de Pascua (el título original de la novela es «The Easter Parade», «El desfile de Pascua»). En el desfile, una cámara captó a Sarah y a Tony, el que después fuera su marido, “en el momento en que se miraban sonrientes como la encarnación misma del amor bajo el sol de primavera”. Esa foto marcó el punto culminante de la vida de Sarah y el punto de felicidad al que siempre aspiró Emily, su hermana pequeña.
Ambas eligieron distintos caminos vitales, que en aquellos días eran en gran medida excluyentes, lo que a ambas les hurtó la posibilidad de alcanzar una vida plena. Sarah tuvo que limitarse a la vida familiar, a cuidar de sus hijos y de su marido, el único hombre al que conoció y del que nunca se separó pese a todo. Emily, desde cuya perspectiva se erige todo el relato, eligió la independencia, fue a la universidad, vivió de su trabajo y buscó la estabilidad emocional con muchos hombres. Ambas, al igual que lo hizo su madre, combatirán su infelicidad con el alcohol y con el resultado que tal batalla tiene siempre.
Yates es un escritor de estilo sobrio, directo y sin adornos que no enamora de entrada, pero que va enredando al lector en la complejidad interior de sus personajes, seres imperfectos que, con nulos resultados, luchan sin descanso por escapar de su soledad y de su desdichado destino.
July 28, 2025
Richard Yates has done it again, and proven why he’s one of my favorite writers. I don’t know any other writer who can be so cynical and pessimistic about love one minute, yet wear his heart on his sleeve to the point where he believes love is the only way to live astounds and baffles me.
“The Easter Parade” is one of the most harrowing and poignant novels I’ve ever read about love going wrong, and how both of its leading characters, the unlucky Grimes sisters keep getting back on their feet, over and over again; in the most masochistic of ways in their search for happiness. Their stories will stay with me.
Sarah and Emily are products of divorced couple, Pookie and Walt Grimes; both unbalanced and hapless, delusional and contradictory. Pookie is a social climbing schemer; Walt is a college dropout turned lowly copy editor for a conservative newspaper. It is their fractured love story that will set the tone in which how their daughters will view and look for love.
Sarah, the eldest, begins the novel physically scarred from a traumatic playground accident. She eventually learns to dull both physical and emotional trauma by trying to live out 1950s norms. She marries Tony Wilson, a British-accented guy who moves her out to the Long Island burbs; gives her three sons, (one, Peter who becomes a preacher) and 25 years of physical and emotional abuse. But she keeps up a stiff upper lip, and endures her misery, and the feminine expectations of women of the period. She even tries her hand at writing, but fails miserably.
Closer to her father, Walt, both emotionally and physically, she tries to connect with her husband, sister and mother in ways that go beyond the polite surface. But she does not succeed; eventually dying under mysterious circumstances.
Emily, the youngest, ironically winds up more Walt’s daughter than she imagined. Accepting a scholarship to study English at Barnard, she too drops out of college just like her father and goes through life accepting a series of haphazard editing, writing, and advertising jobs while becoming an alcoholic and promiscuous woman.
Trying marriage once to an idiotic and impotent man named Andrew, she gets herself into numerous sexcapades with a bisexual lothario and affairs with numerous older and younger men. She finally falls somewhat into a life of domesticity with Howard Dunninger, separated from a much younger woman named Linda; yet, as Linda matures and ages towards her 30s, and Emily ages towards her 40s (which spells out inevitable doom) Howard goes back to the younger woman, leaving Emily to drown in sorrow.
The book is incredibly masochistic and sexist at times, but how Mr. Yates crafts a sentence built of savage truth, stinging hate and bittersweet love is why you keep reading compulsively.
He does not compromise his vision of how love consumes, and how it goes wrong. Emily Grimes’ broken heart and descent into loneliness is too sad beyond words, showing us no mercy in his treatment of his characters; sparing us no pain.
“The Easter Parade” is one of the most harrowing and poignant novels I’ve ever read about love going wrong, and how both of its leading characters, the unlucky Grimes sisters keep getting back on their feet, over and over again; in the most masochistic of ways in their search for happiness. Their stories will stay with me.
Sarah and Emily are products of divorced couple, Pookie and Walt Grimes; both unbalanced and hapless, delusional and contradictory. Pookie is a social climbing schemer; Walt is a college dropout turned lowly copy editor for a conservative newspaper. It is their fractured love story that will set the tone in which how their daughters will view and look for love.
Sarah, the eldest, begins the novel physically scarred from a traumatic playground accident. She eventually learns to dull both physical and emotional trauma by trying to live out 1950s norms. She marries Tony Wilson, a British-accented guy who moves her out to the Long Island burbs; gives her three sons, (one, Peter who becomes a preacher) and 25 years of physical and emotional abuse. But she keeps up a stiff upper lip, and endures her misery, and the feminine expectations of women of the period. She even tries her hand at writing, but fails miserably.
Closer to her father, Walt, both emotionally and physically, she tries to connect with her husband, sister and mother in ways that go beyond the polite surface. But she does not succeed; eventually dying under mysterious circumstances.
Emily, the youngest, ironically winds up more Walt’s daughter than she imagined. Accepting a scholarship to study English at Barnard, she too drops out of college just like her father and goes through life accepting a series of haphazard editing, writing, and advertising jobs while becoming an alcoholic and promiscuous woman.
Trying marriage once to an idiotic and impotent man named Andrew, she gets herself into numerous sexcapades with a bisexual lothario and affairs with numerous older and younger men. She finally falls somewhat into a life of domesticity with Howard Dunninger, separated from a much younger woman named Linda; yet, as Linda matures and ages towards her 30s, and Emily ages towards her 40s (which spells out inevitable doom) Howard goes back to the younger woman, leaving Emily to drown in sorrow.
The book is incredibly masochistic and sexist at times, but how Mr. Yates crafts a sentence built of savage truth, stinging hate and bittersweet love is why you keep reading compulsively.
He does not compromise his vision of how love consumes, and how it goes wrong. Emily Grimes’ broken heart and descent into loneliness is too sad beyond words, showing us no mercy in his treatment of his characters; sparing us no pain.
May 25, 2021
With a style flatter than a pancake that’s been run over by a steamroller three or four times this novel races through the woebegone lives of two American sisters from the 1930s to the 1970s through hideously embarrassing parents, grisly boyfriends, dreadful marriages, tiresome offspring, fading looks, lost jobs, yes, this is the whole whirling dance of death itself and it is performed to the tinkling sounds of clinking bottles and chiming wineglasses and the glug glugging of alcoholic refreshment ending only in the grateful blackout at the end of another perfect day. If you knocked back a whisky sour every time one of the characters does in this book you’d have cirrhosis of the liver by the time you finished it, and it’s a real fast read.
What did we learn from The Easter Parade? We learned that money won’t fix anything, that love curdles like milk, that marriage is for the deluded, and independence is another word for declining mental health. But hard liquor might just get you five minutes of fun here and there although don't count on it. And that on the whole the human race was probably a bad idea.
What did we learn from The Easter Parade? We learned that money won’t fix anything, that love curdles like milk, that marriage is for the deluded, and independence is another word for declining mental health. But hard liquor might just get you five minutes of fun here and there although don't count on it. And that on the whole the human race was probably a bad idea.
May 28, 2013
If you are a girl and your parents get divorced when you are very young, you will either become promiscuous and incapable of real intimacy OR you will marry some abusive asshat and live your life quietly drinking yourself to death.
All right so maybe that’s not the take home message Yates was going for. After all, Yates himself came from a broken home; his parents divorced when he was just three years old. And he was twice divorced himself, so I guess you could say the man knows a thing or two about the topic.
Despite the bleak subject matter, I found myself loving this book. It’s a simple, unsentimental story that follows the lives of two sisters over the course of 4 decades. Emily and Sarah have a rough go of it – their father is an alcoholic, their mother seems a status hungry twit with alcohol issues of her own. Sarah decides to marry the first man who comes along while Emily goes from partner to partner and is more in line with the typical “career girl.” Yet neither girl is content with the choices she has made and each seems to envy the other in some “grass is a little greener” sort of way. No one really comes out on top here.
It’s that sort of realism that I appreciated most reading Yates. I had previously seen the film version of Revolutionary Road, but other than that, this was my first exposure to his writing. It’s one of those engaging little novels that can be gobbled up in one sitting if you have the time... a perfect summer reading-type book.
February 8, 2013
Only Johnny Got His Gun can stand toe to toe with The Easter Parade in the unsettling, horrific way it takes one person's life (and in the case of Parade, several other people besides) and makes you ask yourself, Why the hell are we even here?
With the case Yates brings to the table, you can't refute him. You can't even begin. You can stick your fingers in your ears and close your eyes and babble I can't hear you, I can't hear you but this perfectly crafted novel will be waiting. It has time. It can. It won't be a dramatic thing, either. It will quietly slip up on you and tap you on the shoulder and take your hand and in a quiet voice say, Come along now. And you will, because you have no other choice.
Sometimes I found I was holding my breath.
No, no, don't. They're nice people. Don't. Come on.
Or.
No, no. Don't do that, so-and-so. You know that's the wrong choice. You know it is!
But with a casual swipe, fate/life or the characters' own decisions would send their lives violently askew. Again and again. And you couldn't argue with the character. Not really. Because when you weighed their decisions, it was the choice they were going to make.
Yates never cheats. He doesn't cajole his characters to make the wrong decision. He simply portrays life as it really is, and wham: life hits each character right between the eyes.
This is fine-tuned tragedy of the highest order. If you feel that life is a cruel mistress seeking your personal destruction, you'll find commiseration here. If you feel you're adrift on a sea of meaninglessness, this is your dinghy (full of holes, prepared to sink). If you're a nihilist, this is your argument against life, written out for you plainly and simply.
Even if you have a happy go lucky view of the world, Yates has the power to make you see the dark side.
I'm gonna go listen to Katrina and the Waves.
With the case Yates brings to the table, you can't refute him. You can't even begin. You can stick your fingers in your ears and close your eyes and babble I can't hear you, I can't hear you but this perfectly crafted novel will be waiting. It has time. It can. It won't be a dramatic thing, either. It will quietly slip up on you and tap you on the shoulder and take your hand and in a quiet voice say, Come along now. And you will, because you have no other choice.
Sometimes I found I was holding my breath.
No, no, don't. They're nice people. Don't. Come on.
Or.
No, no. Don't do that, so-and-so. You know that's the wrong choice. You know it is!
But with a casual swipe, fate/life or the characters' own decisions would send their lives violently askew. Again and again. And you couldn't argue with the character. Not really. Because when you weighed their decisions, it was the choice they were going to make.
Yates never cheats. He doesn't cajole his characters to make the wrong decision. He simply portrays life as it really is, and wham: life hits each character right between the eyes.
This is fine-tuned tragedy of the highest order. If you feel that life is a cruel mistress seeking your personal destruction, you'll find commiseration here. If you feel you're adrift on a sea of meaninglessness, this is your dinghy (full of holes, prepared to sink). If you're a nihilist, this is your argument against life, written out for you plainly and simply.
Even if you have a happy go lucky view of the world, Yates has the power to make you see the dark side.
I'm gonna go listen to Katrina and the Waves.
February 15, 2019
yates müthiş bir yazar. amerikan orta sınıfını onun kadar ustalıklı anlatan kaç yazar var bilmiyorum. bu romanında ise kadınları bu kadar iyi anlatması beni hayretlere düşürdü. "iki kız kardeşin ilişkisini, yaşanan gelgitleri sen nasıl bu kadar iyi bilebiliyorsun be adam" diye bağırasım var. çünkü amerikan 1950-60'ları bizim şimdiki halimize (büyük kent, çalışma koşulları, beyaz yakalı ordusu - bir taraftan da işçi ailesi ve şiddet) o kadar benziyor ki... gerek sarah'nın hikayesi gerek emily'nin hikayesi o kadar tanıdık ki...
hele o sonda emily'nin yeğeni peter'a kustuğu öfke, hayatın öfkesi... ağlayarak bitirdim :(
deniz yüce başarır'ın çevirisini çok başarılı buldum bu arada, bilmiyordum şaşırdım.
* yapı kredi yayınları çevirmenleri açlıkla terbiye etmeye çalışıyormuş biliyorsunuz imzalatmaya çalıştığı sözleşmelerle, bu konuda açıklama ve düzeltme yapmazlarsa yayınevinden kitap almayacağım, bunu da ekleyeyim.
hele o sonda emily'nin yeğeni peter'a kustuğu öfke, hayatın öfkesi... ağlayarak bitirdim :(
deniz yüce başarır'ın çevirisini çok başarılı buldum bu arada, bilmiyordum şaşırdım.
* yapı kredi yayınları çevirmenleri açlıkla terbiye etmeye çalışıyormuş biliyorsunuz imzalatmaya çalıştığı sözleşmelerle, bu konuda açıklama ve düzeltme yapmazlarsa yayınevinden kitap almayacağım, bunu da ekleyeyim.
November 9, 2024
After the film "Revolutionary Road" (based on the book Revolutionary Road) the work of Richard Yates (1926-1992) was rediscovered, but he remains underrated. In this book he sketches the lives of two sisters. Sarah chooses the safety of the traditional marriage and househould, but her life ends in domestic violence, booze and loneliness. Emily seems to fare better - even in our 21st century-eyes - because she is educated, emancipated and a modest success in her career. But in the end she too meets failure.
There is not much hapiness to be found in this book: life, even in the modern version, is a vale of tears. Yates brings us this message in a very restrained style, as if to stress the desolate lives of the two sisters. "Easter Parade" has a lot less dramatic panache than "Revolutionary Road", but it certainly is no less captivating!
There is not much hapiness to be found in this book: life, even in the modern version, is a vale of tears. Yates brings us this message in a very restrained style, as if to stress the desolate lives of the two sisters. "Easter Parade" has a lot less dramatic panache than "Revolutionary Road", but it certainly is no less captivating!
July 12, 2016
Liron Kroll - Composed photographs inspired by Richard Yates Novel The Easter Parade
(http://www.lironkroll.com/The-Easter-...)
“O Desfile de Primavera” do escritor norte-americano Richard Yates (1926 – 1992) conta a história de duas irmãs, Sarah e Emily Grimes.
Liron Kroll - Composed photographs inspired by Richard Yates Novel The Easter Parade
Logo na primeira frase do livro o sentido da história fica definido – “Nenhuma das irmãs Grimes estava destinada a ser feliz, e olhando para o passado sempre houve a sensação de que os problemas começaram com o divórcio de seus pais.”
Yates escreve de uma forma brilhante e concisa as vivências emocionais e temporais de duas irmãs, numa narrativa inquietante repleta de tristeza e solidão.
Filhas de pais separados, com a mãe Pookie sempre presente, assistimos sem contemplações ao deambular por diferentes cenários das diversas personagens que nos vão sendo apresentadas e integradas nas várias histórias, com recurso a descrições minuciosas e melancólicas.
Todas as personagens apresentam uma enorme heterogeneidade emocional, delimitada pela dura realidade da vida e de relações fraternais complexas, mas onde o amor mútuo permite um vislumbre ilusório de estabilidade sentimental.
“O Desfile de Primavera” aborda de uma forma admirável algumas das temáticas mais sensíveis dos nossos dias – o casamento, o divórcio, relações conflituosas e violentas entre homem/marido e mulher, autonomia e dependência física e financeira, a miséria moral e os vícios, a solidão, a inveja, a intolerância, o arrependimento, a renúncia, a feminilidade, o alcoolismo, etc. – transmitindo visões opostas numa narrativa cruel e sentimental.
A solidão final de Emily é atroz, próxima da loucura, desesperada pelo contacto físico e emocional, mas com uma réstia de esperança.
“O Desfile de Primavera” é um excelente livro que evidencia uma escrita impecável mas sombria.
October 18, 2025
4,5*
But that was part of the trouble: she lived in memories all the time. No sight or sound or smell in the whole of New York was free of old associations; wherever she walked, and she sometimes walked for hours, she found only the past.
Iniciei este livro ligeiramente divertida, admirada por Richard Yates ter sentido humor depois de todo o fel que consumi em “Revolutionary Road”, e terminei-o profundamente deprimida, mas a gostar bastante mais deste autor.
Ainda que o narrador nos avise logo no início que as irmãs Grimes não iriam ser felizes, a mãe quase burlesca e a infância patética fizeram-me acreditar que o tom poderia ser mais jocoso e menos amargo do que acabou por ser com o avançar dos anos.
É fácil criar empatia com Emily, a irmã mais nova que não era menina da mamã nem do papá, mas a sua incapacidade de criar laços com a própria família e de se envolver emocionalmente é bastante descoraçoante. Emily é inteligente e independente, tem um tremendo azar com os homens que lhe calham em sorte, ainda que não se acomode e seja uma prova inequívoca da emancipação sexual feminina dos anos 60, mas as escolhas que faz na vida e o seu comportamento autodestrutivo chegam a incomodar.
She drank—apparently he had handed her a drink, and apparently she’d accepted it without thinking—and only now, with the alcohol spreading warm through her chest and down her arms, did she begin to realize how much she was enjoying herself. It was fine to be passionately in the right on so clear an issue—the scrappy kid sister as avenging angel; she wanted this exhilaration to go on and on. Glancing over at Sarah, though, she wished Sarah hadn’t washed her face and covered her slip and straightened up the bedclothes to hide the bloodstains; it would have made a more dramatic picture the other way.
But that was part of the trouble: she lived in memories all the time. No sight or sound or smell in the whole of New York was free of old associations; wherever she walked, and she sometimes walked for hours, she found only the past.
Iniciei este livro ligeiramente divertida, admirada por Richard Yates ter sentido humor depois de todo o fel que consumi em “Revolutionary Road”, e terminei-o profundamente deprimida, mas a gostar bastante mais deste autor.
Ainda que o narrador nos avise logo no início que as irmãs Grimes não iriam ser felizes, a mãe quase burlesca e a infância patética fizeram-me acreditar que o tom poderia ser mais jocoso e menos amargo do que acabou por ser com o avançar dos anos.
É fácil criar empatia com Emily, a irmã mais nova que não era menina da mamã nem do papá, mas a sua incapacidade de criar laços com a própria família e de se envolver emocionalmente é bastante descoraçoante. Emily é inteligente e independente, tem um tremendo azar com os homens que lhe calham em sorte, ainda que não se acomode e seja uma prova inequívoca da emancipação sexual feminina dos anos 60, mas as escolhas que faz na vida e o seu comportamento autodestrutivo chegam a incomodar.
She drank—apparently he had handed her a drink, and apparently she’d accepted it without thinking—and only now, with the alcohol spreading warm through her chest and down her arms, did she begin to realize how much she was enjoying herself. It was fine to be passionately in the right on so clear an issue—the scrappy kid sister as avenging angel; she wanted this exhilaration to go on and on. Glancing over at Sarah, though, she wished Sarah hadn’t washed her face and covered her slip and straightened up the bedclothes to hide the bloodstains; it would have made a more dramatic picture the other way.
March 1, 2018
Madri e figlie
“Né l’una né l’altra delle sorelle Grimes avrebbe avuto una vita felice, e a ripensarci si aveva sempre l’impressione che i guai fossero cominciati con il divorzio dei loro genitori”
Yates avverte fin dall’incipit: questa è una storia di infelicità. Non c’è scampo.
E' la storia di tre donne. Una madre superficiale e inadeguata e di due figlie, Sarah e Emily, che ripercorrono lo stesso cammino fallimentare della madre.
Il libro parla della mancanza di coraggio e di obiettivi nella vita delle persone. Le due figlie vivono sognando un futuro improbabile, mentono a sé stesse, si costruiscono alibi. Sarah accetta una vita finta, annulla se stessa in un matrimonio violento, si rintana nei sogni, è sopraffatta dalla paura del cambiamento. E’ immobile e le sue fughe sono solo apparenti.
Emily ha il coraggio, di scegliere e di prendere in mano la propria vita, ma fallisce miseramente. Lo fa perché vive fuggendo senza un progetto. Fugge dalla madre, dalla superficialità, dalla solitudine, dalla dipendenza. Continua ad evidenziare cose che non vuole, ma non ha progetti, non si chiede quale cosa voglia esattamente. Giudica continuamente degli altri, analizza i comportamenti che non sopporta ma non ha la forza di scommettere sul futuro e di provare a cambiare quello che non le piace. E alla fine getta la spugna e rimane drammaticamente triste e sola.
Nel libro aleggia la domanda se sia meglio un matrimonio e la famiglia oppure una vita indipendente con relazioni poco impegnative. Ma Yates indica chiaramente che nessuna delle due strade porta alla felicità. Il risultato degli sforzi per costruire una relazione, per mostrare le proprie capacità e le proprie aspirazioni è il fallimento, la frustrazione.
Tutto il romanzo, scritto in modo lucido e perfetto, è pervaso da una sensazione di angoscia dovuta non tanto all'infelicità delle tre donne, quanto al fatto che non c’è via di fuga. Non ci rimane che accettare che comunque agiamo abbiamo un triste destino di solitudine. Easter Parade non lascia speranza alcuna.
July 26, 2021
A five-star first half, a three-year second half, and a four-star ending. Shame it lost so much momentum after those fantastic early chapters.
June 30, 2018
OK, it is really sad. Some say this is too dark, the characters so failed and unaccountably gloomy to be worth reading. But I enjoy these types of stories, not because they uplift, but because they seem to help me understand what is inexplicable in my own life. I feel empathy for people who are their own worst enemies, and Yates’ book surely describes a number of these. It is a story of two sisters who are damaged by divorce and time spent with a deeply flawed mother, who never could figure it out. This story is set in New York city and Long Island, from the 40s to the 70s, and it feels deeply autobiographical (it was written in 1975). It is a time when women’s options were limited and many were trapped by the constructs of American life of this era. Yates writes from the female point of view, and it is masterful in detail of time and place. The protagonist, Emily, the younger sister watches her mother and sister who simply cannot extricate themselves from their situations. The frustration is palpable, as they make one poor decision after another, and bury their loss in alcohol. Emily is afraid of commitment and leads a rather pathetic solitary life, using her few talents and looks to lure a string of men into her life. Ultimately she is not spared, and ends up alone with few friends, sleepwalking through life. This review is likely bringing you down, but the writing is so sharp and its authenticity will leave you caring about this girl and her struggles. Her nephew is one redeemed character, who is almost holy in his forbearance and kindness to the flawed members of his family. This story is about the fate that can await people who fail to find love and gain no comfort in religion. These flawed characters have peculiar blend of narcissism and self-loathing. The complexity of these characters make them interesting. It is, sadly, the story of many of our own kind, and Yates makes me care about those poor souls. Beauty and youth subside, as her beautiful engaged married sister on the cover of the “Easter parade” section of the newspaper tragically will learn that it is all downhill. The author in his pictures seems like these people, and I can almost smell the whiskey and stale cigarette through the picture. He is still a favorite of mine because of his unflinchingly accurate depictions of the gradual and tragic loss of hope. Here are a few examples:
p. 80: “…college had taught her that the purpose of a liberal-arts education was not to train but to free the mind. It didn’t matter what you did for a living; the important thing was the kind of person you were.”
p. 152, getting up the nerve to confront her abusive brother in law: “She drank- apparently he had handed her a drink and apparently she’d accepted it without thinking- and only now, with the alcohol spreading warm through her chest and down her arms, did she begin to realize how much she was enjoying herself. It was fine to be passionately in the right on so clear and issue- the scrappy kid sister as avenging angel; she wanted this exhilaration to go on and on. Glancing over at Sarah, though, she wished Sarah hadn’t washed her face and covered her slip and straightened up the bedclothes to hide the blood stains; it would have made a more dramatic picture the other way.”
p. 167, her lover lamenting his estrangement from his wife and revealing his own failings: “And I think that’s when she started getting restless, along about the time I started boring her. God damn it, Emily, how can I make you understand how nice she was? It’s a thing that can’t be described. Tender, loving, and at the same time she can was tough. I don’t mean ‘tough’ in any pejorative sense, I mean resilient, courageous; she had a wholly unsentimental way of looking at the world. Intelligent! Jesus, it was almost frightening sometimes how she’d go straight to the heart of some elusive, complicated thing with an intuitive insight. She was funny to- she didn’t sit around getting of paralyzing one liners, its just that she had a very sharp eye for the absurdity behind anything pretentious. She was a great companion. Why do I keep saying ‘was’? It’s not as if she were dead.”
p. 208, upon happening on her own reflection: “…the medicine cabinet mirror caught her as cruelly as the window on the street that day, and there it was again: the face of a middle aged woman in hopeless and terrible need….she knew the moment she saw him…that it was over.”
p. 80: “…college had taught her that the purpose of a liberal-arts education was not to train but to free the mind. It didn’t matter what you did for a living; the important thing was the kind of person you were.”
p. 152, getting up the nerve to confront her abusive brother in law: “She drank- apparently he had handed her a drink and apparently she’d accepted it without thinking- and only now, with the alcohol spreading warm through her chest and down her arms, did she begin to realize how much she was enjoying herself. It was fine to be passionately in the right on so clear and issue- the scrappy kid sister as avenging angel; she wanted this exhilaration to go on and on. Glancing over at Sarah, though, she wished Sarah hadn’t washed her face and covered her slip and straightened up the bedclothes to hide the blood stains; it would have made a more dramatic picture the other way.”
p. 167, her lover lamenting his estrangement from his wife and revealing his own failings: “And I think that’s when she started getting restless, along about the time I started boring her. God damn it, Emily, how can I make you understand how nice she was? It’s a thing that can’t be described. Tender, loving, and at the same time she can was tough. I don’t mean ‘tough’ in any pejorative sense, I mean resilient, courageous; she had a wholly unsentimental way of looking at the world. Intelligent! Jesus, it was almost frightening sometimes how she’d go straight to the heart of some elusive, complicated thing with an intuitive insight. She was funny to- she didn’t sit around getting of paralyzing one liners, its just that she had a very sharp eye for the absurdity behind anything pretentious. She was a great companion. Why do I keep saying ‘was’? It’s not as if she were dead.”
p. 208, upon happening on her own reflection: “…the medicine cabinet mirror caught her as cruelly as the window on the street that day, and there it was again: the face of a middle aged woman in hopeless and terrible need….she knew the moment she saw him…that it was over.”
April 19, 2020
The story drawn here is dark. It is bleak.
The tale follows two sisters, the older Sarah and Emily four years younger, from 1930 when their parents divorce to the 1970s, when one sister dies. We start with Emily at five and Sarah at nine. Their lives follow different patterns. Emily gets a scholarship to Barnard College and majors in literature. She flits from guy to guy. Her sister gets married and stays married, no matter what. We look at the sisters’ relationship with each other and their mates. That’s it. That is the whole story. Which one has chosen the right path? What does the story say about human behavior? There is no fairy tale happy ending.
The setting is primarily in upper state New York, Long Island and New York City. This is a book of historical fiction in that it captures behavior prevalent after the war. Cocktails and drinking and smoking were the norm. Feminism was growing. Sexual constraints were questioned if not simply ignored. If loose behavior is going to bother you, I don’t advise you to read this book. There is also physical abuse.
Richard Yates is good with his lines. Check these out:
”He looks intelligent, even when chewing bubble-gum.”
Here’s a description of intellectuals “You had to be serious, but this was the maddening paradox, you had to seem to never take anything seriously.”
Do you see the humor?
The audiobook is narrated by Kristoffer Tabori. He dramatizes. He dramatizes in spades. I dislike dramatization of audiobooks. His dramatization made it difficult for me to focus on the prose. His dramatization is however not poorly done, if you like dramatization. There is a lot of drinking in this novel; I found it exceedingly annoying to listen to the exaggerated slurred speech of those drunk. There is anger and there is screaming. These are dramatized too. This is not an audiobook easy to listen to. I have given the narration performance two stars. If you enjoy dramatization, you will give the narration a much higher rating.
This book is not pleasant to read, but it has a message that packs a punch at the end. It draws people and difficult situations accurately.
*********************
Revolutionary Road 5 stars
The Easter Parade 4 stars
Cold Spring Harbor TBR
The tale follows two sisters, the older Sarah and Emily four years younger, from 1930 when their parents divorce to the 1970s, when one sister dies. We start with Emily at five and Sarah at nine. Their lives follow different patterns. Emily gets a scholarship to Barnard College and majors in literature. She flits from guy to guy. Her sister gets married and stays married, no matter what. We look at the sisters’ relationship with each other and their mates. That’s it. That is the whole story. Which one has chosen the right path? What does the story say about human behavior? There is no fairy tale happy ending.
The setting is primarily in upper state New York, Long Island and New York City. This is a book of historical fiction in that it captures behavior prevalent after the war. Cocktails and drinking and smoking were the norm. Feminism was growing. Sexual constraints were questioned if not simply ignored. If loose behavior is going to bother you, I don’t advise you to read this book. There is also physical abuse.
Richard Yates is good with his lines. Check these out:
”He looks intelligent, even when chewing bubble-gum.”
Here’s a description of intellectuals “You had to be serious, but this was the maddening paradox, you had to seem to never take anything seriously.”
Do you see the humor?
The audiobook is narrated by Kristoffer Tabori. He dramatizes. He dramatizes in spades. I dislike dramatization of audiobooks. His dramatization made it difficult for me to focus on the prose. His dramatization is however not poorly done, if you like dramatization. There is a lot of drinking in this novel; I found it exceedingly annoying to listen to the exaggerated slurred speech of those drunk. There is anger and there is screaming. These are dramatized too. This is not an audiobook easy to listen to. I have given the narration performance two stars. If you enjoy dramatization, you will give the narration a much higher rating.
This book is not pleasant to read, but it has a message that packs a punch at the end. It draws people and difficult situations accurately.
*********************
Revolutionary Road 5 stars
The Easter Parade 4 stars
Cold Spring Harbor TBR
July 31, 2017
Senza pelle
Letto a cavallo tra il pomeriggio e la serata di oggi, tutto d'un fiato.
Le parole di Richard Yates scorrono come l'acqua di un fiume in piena e trascinano a fondo, portando con sé malinconia, inadeguatezza, disagio profondo, rassegnazione, che aumentano progressivamente con l'aumentare delle pagine sul lato sinistro del libro.
L'altra faccia del sogno americano è il correttore di bozze anziché il giornalista di successo, la donna sola anziché libera ed emancipata, la famiglia che è sempre più annullamento delle proprie aspirazioni e dei propri sogni anziché condivisione e realizzazione.
Anche in questo romanzo la scrittura di Yates, come già in Revolutionary Road (secondo me comunque il suo migliore tra quelli letti, un gradino più su rispetto agli altri) e in Disturbo della quiete pubblica, è talmente pulita e diretta da far credere ad una stesura "in presa diretta": sembra quasi che i fatti stiano avvenendo nell'esatto momento in cui li si stia leggendo; Yates non usa frasi né parole inutili, è tutto talmente funzionale ed essenziale al fine delle sue storie da far credere che tutto quello che racconta sia già successo e che lui l'abbia solo fissato fotograficamente.
Anche se le sue, e questa è la sua grandezza, sono foto dell'anima.
Gli americani - diceva Yates - hanno sempre dato per scontato, nel loro subconscio, che tutte le storie abbiano un lieto fine.
E allora, durante i cinquant'anni in cui ci descrive le vite di Pookie e delle sue figlie, Sarah ed Emily, nonostante ci porti continuamente sull'orlo del precipizio, nonostante continui a mostrarci il baratro delle loro esistenze, nonostante continui a spingerci "sempre avanti" e contemporaneamente a mostrarci quello che era e che non è stato, come si fa, nonostante tutto, a non voler bene ad Emily e a non sperare fino alla fine nella sua felicità?
In fondo la sua, sarebbe anche un po' la nostra.
Letto a cavallo tra il pomeriggio e la serata di oggi, tutto d'un fiato.
Le parole di Richard Yates scorrono come l'acqua di un fiume in piena e trascinano a fondo, portando con sé malinconia, inadeguatezza, disagio profondo, rassegnazione, che aumentano progressivamente con l'aumentare delle pagine sul lato sinistro del libro.
L'altra faccia del sogno americano è il correttore di bozze anziché il giornalista di successo, la donna sola anziché libera ed emancipata, la famiglia che è sempre più annullamento delle proprie aspirazioni e dei propri sogni anziché condivisione e realizzazione.
Anche in questo romanzo la scrittura di Yates, come già in Revolutionary Road (secondo me comunque il suo migliore tra quelli letti, un gradino più su rispetto agli altri) e in Disturbo della quiete pubblica, è talmente pulita e diretta da far credere ad una stesura "in presa diretta": sembra quasi che i fatti stiano avvenendo nell'esatto momento in cui li si stia leggendo; Yates non usa frasi né parole inutili, è tutto talmente funzionale ed essenziale al fine delle sue storie da far credere che tutto quello che racconta sia già successo e che lui l'abbia solo fissato fotograficamente.
Anche se le sue, e questa è la sua grandezza, sono foto dell'anima.
Gli americani - diceva Yates - hanno sempre dato per scontato, nel loro subconscio, che tutte le storie abbiano un lieto fine.
E allora, durante i cinquant'anni in cui ci descrive le vite di Pookie e delle sue figlie, Sarah ed Emily, nonostante ci porti continuamente sull'orlo del precipizio, nonostante continui a mostrarci il baratro delle loro esistenze, nonostante continui a spingerci "sempre avanti" e contemporaneamente a mostrarci quello che era e che non è stato, come si fa, nonostante tutto, a non voler bene ad Emily e a non sperare fino alla fine nella sua felicità?
In fondo la sua, sarebbe anche un po' la nostra.
April 26, 2024
I thought I should get this finalised and reviewed no matter how brief as I will be in Greece for nine weeks and who knows if I'll get time to do anything normal like reading and reviewing.
When you are in a Richard Yates novel, you know you are in America. It breathes and sweats and speaks in that voice that only Americans can produce, and Yates is so good at it. You cannot be out of place or disoriented. Though you wonder whether the characters know if they are on the right track, they can be off the rails in so many ways.
Drink, bad decisions, sexual freedom, marriage, career, family weave in and out of a little nuclear family that split like an atomic event. So you get all the crushing reality that America is a tough place to live, even in these halcyon years post WW2 when you'd think America was the best place to live. In episodic time frames parents get divorced, fathers die young, mothers set no boundaries, kids learn how to grow up themselves, reproducing the same. Two sisters, one marries, the other takes to a career. But we know that post war America is a hard place for women to cut it. Even when living the ideal liberated form of themselves not everyone agrees with the protagonist. Someone will screw you up somehow. Or leave you feeling ambiguous about your lot, even if you got it exactly as you wanted it. You thought anyway.
When you are in a Richard Yates novel, you know you are in America. It breathes and sweats and speaks in that voice that only Americans can produce, and Yates is so good at it. You cannot be out of place or disoriented. Though you wonder whether the characters know if they are on the right track, they can be off the rails in so many ways.
Drink, bad decisions, sexual freedom, marriage, career, family weave in and out of a little nuclear family that split like an atomic event. So you get all the crushing reality that America is a tough place to live, even in these halcyon years post WW2 when you'd think America was the best place to live. In episodic time frames parents get divorced, fathers die young, mothers set no boundaries, kids learn how to grow up themselves, reproducing the same. Two sisters, one marries, the other takes to a career. But we know that post war America is a hard place for women to cut it. Even when living the ideal liberated form of themselves not everyone agrees with the protagonist. Someone will screw you up somehow. Or leave you feeling ambiguous about your lot, even if you got it exactly as you wanted it. You thought anyway.
December 12, 2015
"I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life."
Are we all destined to go insane? Are we all doomed by the damage our parents unwittingly inflicted on us? Do we never ever learn a damn thing at all? Many of us go through life not realizing until the final hour that history does indeed repeat itself, and our parents -- our well meaning but ill equipped and broken parents -- ruined us.
This is certainly the case for Emily and Sarah, two sisters from a broken home whose mostly absent father and unstable and alcoholic mother set up the blueprint for a lifetime of bad decisions and misery. Yates is a master of painting the picture of the struggling and flawed character and he never cops out with a happy ending tied up in a pretty bow. The opening line smacks you in the face with that promise, lest you think you're about to embark on a sunny journey "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce."
Life for his characters is a series of disappointments and despair and Emily and Sarah spend their lives over four decades swimming against the tide and ultimately disintegrating. Though it wasn't my favorite Yates book, all the ingredients I adore about his work were there - the denial, the loneliness, the sorrow.
Are we all destined to go insane? Are we all doomed by the damage our parents unwittingly inflicted on us? Do we never ever learn a damn thing at all? Many of us go through life not realizing until the final hour that history does indeed repeat itself, and our parents -- our well meaning but ill equipped and broken parents -- ruined us.
This is certainly the case for Emily and Sarah, two sisters from a broken home whose mostly absent father and unstable and alcoholic mother set up the blueprint for a lifetime of bad decisions and misery. Yates is a master of painting the picture of the struggling and flawed character and he never cops out with a happy ending tied up in a pretty bow. The opening line smacks you in the face with that promise, lest you think you're about to embark on a sunny journey "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce."
Life for his characters is a series of disappointments and despair and Emily and Sarah spend their lives over four decades swimming against the tide and ultimately disintegrating. Though it wasn't my favorite Yates book, all the ingredients I adore about his work were there - the denial, the loneliness, the sorrow.
January 11, 2026
Life is a blessing when you and your family are well suited for each other. Life can be hell when you're not. This is a book that ended well.
February 8, 2011
I’m not sure what Yates was up to in two-thirds of The Easter Parade. He certainly wasn’t playing to his strength—that is, the deep, layered scene: the slow death of a party; the waning of an afternoon buzz; the polite prolongation of a tense visit; lives told in gesture; and dialogue so perfect you see speakers without description. Two of the novel’s three Parts flash by in what biographer Blake Bailey, I see, grandly dubs “summary narration” which, he goes on to plead, “serves the larger purpose of emphasizing the characters’ helplessness, as if things were happening to them, suddenly, but with a terrible logic.” That’s bullshit. “Summary narration” = phoning it in. Narration so summary means thin, watery prose, a sketched outline of events rather than patient portrayal, and merely nominal protagonists. In the especially weak middle section I wondered if the dimming of Yates’s reputation, from the 1960s on, wasn’t, you know, deserved. It’s that bad. But not for long. The guy can write. When he’s at his best—and he’s at his best in the psych wards and cemeteries and mildewy kitchens of Part Three—Bellow and Updike mean nothing to me. Nothing. I thought of Yates the other day, when a skimmed article on US-sponsored massacres of Guatemalans yielded up some Sartre: “A victory described in detail is indistinguishable from a defeat.” Yates sees you at your most triumphant and glamorous and rewarded and all he notes is a jerky shamble of awkwardness, a coarse patchwork of illusions—after Sarah Grimes’ wedding, her father “kept mostly to himself at the party; he stood nursing a scotch, ready to smile at Sarah whenever she smiled at him”—and oh shit, you better not let him see you gulping down screwdrivers on the couch, or witness the congress of louts that gathers to drink after your funeral. We’re all doomed!
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
Want to read
August 11, 2016Oh look! Here comes the Easter Parade! With plenty of floats!
Oh, the floats!
Oh, the floats!
January 12, 2018
Romanzo autobiografico come tutti gli scritti di Richard Yates che girano e rigirano sempre attorno agli stessi temi: rapporti famigliari difficili, la solitudine, l’alcool come soluzione ai problemi.
Yates ci racconta, nell’arco di un cinquantennio, le vite di Emily e Sally le due sorelle protagoniste di Easter Parade, le loro sono vite vissute in superficie, dolori, drammi, falle, imperfezioni dell’esistenza descritti come se fossero in fondo sopportabili, mi piego ma non mi spezzo, come se si potesse convivere con tutto e nonostante tutto, senza mai soffrire troppo.
Non ho trovato in Yates tutto il dolore che pensavo, è un libro sulla ricerca della felicità, lo è? Non credo è come se la felicità fosse una ambizione troppo elevata, allora si ricalibrano le prospettive verso il basso e diventa un libro sull’accettazione e sulla rassegnazione, senza troppi traumi, di ciò che la vita offre: non sempre puoi avere quello che desideri devi solo prendere quello che ti viene dato e fartelo bastare (che morale discutibile).
I sentimenti di Emily e Sally diventano come diluiti, rimangono sempre sulla cresta dell’onda senza mai scendere in profondità, io invece avrei voluto scendere giù verso il basso e sprofondarmi nei fondali dell’esistenza per vedere le creature degli abissi che vivono nella più completa oscurità. Yates non lo ha permesso. Yates suggerisce, mostra ma non dice.
Yates ci racconta, nell’arco di un cinquantennio, le vite di Emily e Sally le due sorelle protagoniste di Easter Parade, le loro sono vite vissute in superficie, dolori, drammi, falle, imperfezioni dell’esistenza descritti come se fossero in fondo sopportabili, mi piego ma non mi spezzo, come se si potesse convivere con tutto e nonostante tutto, senza mai soffrire troppo.
Non ho trovato in Yates tutto il dolore che pensavo, è un libro sulla ricerca della felicità, lo è? Non credo è come se la felicità fosse una ambizione troppo elevata, allora si ricalibrano le prospettive verso il basso e diventa un libro sull’accettazione e sulla rassegnazione, senza troppi traumi, di ciò che la vita offre: non sempre puoi avere quello che desideri devi solo prendere quello che ti viene dato e fartelo bastare (che morale discutibile).
I sentimenti di Emily e Sally diventano come diluiti, rimangono sempre sulla cresta dell’onda senza mai scendere in profondità, io invece avrei voluto scendere giù verso il basso e sprofondarmi nei fondali dell’esistenza per vedere le creature degli abissi che vivono nella più completa oscurità. Yates non lo ha permesso. Yates suggerisce, mostra ma non dice.
September 6, 2010
It's been a few years since I've read "The Easter Parade," by Richard Yates. I read it first in college many years ago, then in my late 20s, and now in my mid-40s. This book simply gets better and better. Not only is the writing flawlessly rendered, the inevitable circumstances of sisters Emily and Sarah are presented with honesty, empathy and tremendous sensitivity by a master realist who knows exactly how alcoholic families live out their lives. What the TV show "Mad Men" reveals about our culture and ourselves Yates revealed decades ago. This novel is so good on so many levels: I love his brevity and movement within a scene, his pitch perfect dialogue, and the flow of every sentence. Yates is like Haydn at his best, clear, concise, and musically unforgettable. Emily is a brilliant character. Her total meltdown in the final scene may be a little too raw and unhinged for my taste (and perhaps too similar to Andrew's vicious, over-the-top meltdown at the end of Part One), but I do appreciate just how insane and lost Yates's characters ultimately find themselves after all their dreams have been hopelessly dismissed. There may not be another writer who captured the trappings of the American dream more brutally than Richard Yates. I can see why he admired Fitzgerald so much. They're writing about the same thing.
July 7, 2024
Dos hermanas son las protagonistas, Sarah de 9 y Emily de 5, es como si las tomáramos de la mano y nos enseñaran los orígenes y los porqués de sus decisiones, y vamos así recorriendo con ellas cada una de las etapas de sus vidas.
Todo tiene que ver con lo vital, antecedentes familiares y las heridas que se van anidando sin cicatrizar, formando un crisol de circunstancias que llevan a un mismo final aunque los caminos recorridos sean diametralmente opuestos.
La pluma de Yates se muestra delicada, incisiva pero al mismo tiempo sensible, intimista pero como un bisturí nos va enseñando capas y capas de piel hasta llegar al fondo, al rojo dramático, a las feas entrañas pero todo de una forma tan delicada que sin quererlo estamos metidos en las arenas movedizas en que se convierten este relato, pues a donde se muevan o desplacen las hermanas parece haber el mismo infortunio esperándolas, un destino nada grato pero tampoco sorprendente o increíble más bien espantosamente parecido a la realidad.
Los padres son como los detonantes, el un copista de un diario, ella una eterna soñadora, alejada de la realidad, se divorcian, las niñas se van con la madre que las arrastra en un mundo lleno de mudanzas, delirios de grandeza, secretos, y estrecheces.
Conforme crecen cada una va desarrollando una personalidad única, Sarah quiere casarse y tener una familia; Emily no sabe bien lo que quiere pero no ser esposa o madre, mas bien tener una profesión, cada una a su manera cumple sus sueños pero estos no las llevan a una vida plena o feliz, y eso ahonda un poco el dramatismo que se va gestando conforme se llega al final.
Hay momentos donde se puede percibir que si una decisión hubiera sido distinta a lo mejor el resultado sería otro.
El hilo conductor de la familia es fino, lo que los une, los identifica, sin ellos saberlo, lo que comparten como una particularidad nimia, y que está presente en la novela, siempre, aunque sin grandes aspavientos o dramatismos es el alcoholismo, y eso realza la sordidez, lo triste y lo doloroso.
No hay fisuras en la narración, el libro de principio a fin es coherente con las primeras líneas que lo resumen y que uno olvida, aunque el final las trae de vuelta.
“Ninguna de las hermanas Grimes estaba destinada a ser feliz”
Todo tiene que ver con lo vital, antecedentes familiares y las heridas que se van anidando sin cicatrizar, formando un crisol de circunstancias que llevan a un mismo final aunque los caminos recorridos sean diametralmente opuestos.
La pluma de Yates se muestra delicada, incisiva pero al mismo tiempo sensible, intimista pero como un bisturí nos va enseñando capas y capas de piel hasta llegar al fondo, al rojo dramático, a las feas entrañas pero todo de una forma tan delicada que sin quererlo estamos metidos en las arenas movedizas en que se convierten este relato, pues a donde se muevan o desplacen las hermanas parece haber el mismo infortunio esperándolas, un destino nada grato pero tampoco sorprendente o increíble más bien espantosamente parecido a la realidad.
Los padres son como los detonantes, el un copista de un diario, ella una eterna soñadora, alejada de la realidad, se divorcian, las niñas se van con la madre que las arrastra en un mundo lleno de mudanzas, delirios de grandeza, secretos, y estrecheces.
Conforme crecen cada una va desarrollando una personalidad única, Sarah quiere casarse y tener una familia; Emily no sabe bien lo que quiere pero no ser esposa o madre, mas bien tener una profesión, cada una a su manera cumple sus sueños pero estos no las llevan a una vida plena o feliz, y eso ahonda un poco el dramatismo que se va gestando conforme se llega al final.
Hay momentos donde se puede percibir que si una decisión hubiera sido distinta a lo mejor el resultado sería otro.
El hilo conductor de la familia es fino, lo que los une, los identifica, sin ellos saberlo, lo que comparten como una particularidad nimia, y que está presente en la novela, siempre, aunque sin grandes aspavientos o dramatismos es el alcoholismo, y eso realza la sordidez, lo triste y lo doloroso.
No hay fisuras en la narración, el libro de principio a fin es coherente con las primeras líneas que lo resumen y que uno olvida, aunque el final las trae de vuelta.
“Ninguna de las hermanas Grimes estaba destinada a ser feliz”
April 15, 2021
The Easter Parade is a sobering look at relationships predominantly that of the Grimes sisters Emily and Sarah one sister taking on the the more traditional route of marriage and children, forgoing a career of her own to look after her husband and children, Emily goes the opposite direction never marrying although embarks on many love affairs, a very modern thinker who dedicates herself to her career and following her own path, both sisters deal with the fallout of their parents divorce and they are left picking up the pieces. Having to deal with their mentally unstable mother and absent father. Although the sisters go in completely different directions neither sister finds contentment, lives full of disappointment both the sisters feel a loneliness and despair unique to their own situations. Despite the fact this author is male he does a marvellous job writing about women, the progressive themes illuminating for the times. I enjoyed this despite how tragic it was.
December 29, 2014
Se leggere un libro può essere paragonato a fare un viaggio verso mete ideali, leggere questo libro è stato per me un viaggio nella steppa caucasica. Luoghi monotematicamente deserti, disabitati, aridi, senza vegetazione se non arbusti e qualche pianta grassa, spinosa. Non ci sono case, non ci sono paesi, non c’è acqua. Tutto è secco, arido e ci vivono solo animali abituati alla lotta per la sopravvivenza, ratti o serpenti.
In questo libro Yates affonda il bisturi, come un bravo chirurgo, nelle meschinità e nell’egoismo dell’animo umano, in particolare nella illusorietà dei legami della famiglia che appare essere la culla degli affetti, in realtà è la negazione del sentimento e la culla della solitudine. Fin dalle prime righe si capisce che nella storia che andremo a leggere c’era stata una famiglia, ma ora c’erano solo tre individui, una madre vagabonda che trascina con sé due povere bambine, sradicate ogni volta dal luogo in cui vivono per trasferirsi da un’altra parte. E queste due giovani donne, ognuna immersa nella propria infinita solitudine, crescono e vivono alla ricerca assurda di felicità, o almeno di stabilità, nell’incapacità di arrivarvi, incappando in fallimenti e delusioni, evidenziando quanto di più meschino ed arido vi è nell’animo umano: non v’è legame di sangue che tenga, non v’è nulla che leghi quelle donne, se non la loro inettitudine ad affrontare la vita.
Più procedevo con la lettura più sentivo un desiderio di chiudere il libro, di scaraventarlo via, ma al contempo non potevo smettere di chiedermi :”cosa accadrà ora d’altro?” e così proseguire a leggere la limpida e meravigliosa scrittura di Yates.
Attrazione e repulsione, queste le emozioni che mi hanno accompagnato. E alla fine, riconosco che anche un viaggio nella steppa caucasica ha il suo fascino, soprattutto se si ha una guida eccezionalmente preparata come Richard Yates.
In questo libro Yates affonda il bisturi, come un bravo chirurgo, nelle meschinità e nell’egoismo dell’animo umano, in particolare nella illusorietà dei legami della famiglia che appare essere la culla degli affetti, in realtà è la negazione del sentimento e la culla della solitudine. Fin dalle prime righe si capisce che nella storia che andremo a leggere c’era stata una famiglia, ma ora c’erano solo tre individui, una madre vagabonda che trascina con sé due povere bambine, sradicate ogni volta dal luogo in cui vivono per trasferirsi da un’altra parte. E queste due giovani donne, ognuna immersa nella propria infinita solitudine, crescono e vivono alla ricerca assurda di felicità, o almeno di stabilità, nell’incapacità di arrivarvi, incappando in fallimenti e delusioni, evidenziando quanto di più meschino ed arido vi è nell’animo umano: non v’è legame di sangue che tenga, non v’è nulla che leghi quelle donne, se non la loro inettitudine ad affrontare la vita.
Più procedevo con la lettura più sentivo un desiderio di chiudere il libro, di scaraventarlo via, ma al contempo non potevo smettere di chiedermi :”cosa accadrà ora d’altro?” e così proseguire a leggere la limpida e meravigliosa scrittura di Yates.
Attrazione e repulsione, queste le emozioni che mi hanno accompagnato. E alla fine, riconosco che anche un viaggio nella steppa caucasica ha il suo fascino, soprattutto se si ha una guida eccezionalmente preparata come Richard Yates.
April 19, 2020
O primă întâlnire plăcută a fost Parada de Paște!
"- Studiile universitare sunt un lucru minunat."
"- Am vrut doar să spun că după părerea mea e mai bine să crești la țară."
"În afară de asta, din timpul facultății reținuse că scopul studierii artelor liberale nu era să pregătească mintea, ci să o elibereze. Nu conta cu ce te ocupai ca să îți câștigi existența; important era ce fel de persoană erai."
"- Sunt puțini oamenii cu care să-ți facă plăcere să petreci o duminică."
"- Studiile universitare sunt un lucru minunat."
"- Am vrut doar să spun că după părerea mea e mai bine să crești la țară."
"În afară de asta, din timpul facultății reținuse că scopul studierii artelor liberale nu era să pregătească mintea, ci să o elibereze. Nu conta cu ce te ocupai ca să îți câștigi existența; important era ce fel de persoană erai."
"- Sunt puțini oamenii cu care să-ți facă plăcere să petreci o duminică."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,098 reviews