Another masterpiece from the author of Revolutionary Road Michael Davenport, a minor poet, is an intensely ambitious young man - just old enough to have served in the US Air Force at the tail end of World War Two. Every failure he suffers in his efforts to become established as a professional writer weighs against the uneasy knowledge that his wife, Lucy, has an untapped private fortune amounting to millions of dollars. Lucy, for her part, always elegant but often shy, is never quite certain what is expected of her. And as a couple, the Davenports are repeatedly dismayed at meeting other people whose lives appear brighter and better than their own. In this magnificent novel, at once bitterly sad and achingly funny, Richard Yates again shows himself to be the supreme, tenderly ironic chronicler of the 'American Dream' and its casualties.
'Yates is good at bad couples, sad, sour marriages, young hopes corroded by suburban life...These are bitterly perceptive books, depressing but difficult to put down' Grace Ingoldby, New Statesman
'Yates intends to spare his readers nothing. He is a truthful and ruthless writer' Robert Nye, Guardian
'A natural story-teller' Nina Bawden, Daily Telegraph
