The Easter Parade

THE EASTER PARADE

by Richard Yates

 

Nominations: National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1976, NY Times Finalist 1976

 

Date Read: February 17, 2023

 

Two bright, young sisters, Sarah and Emily Grimes, are set for a life of misery. How do we know? The very first line of The Easter Parade states, “Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life." Although Yates gives up the ghost even before getting going, I was still compelled to continue to figure out how these bright and hopeful young women would end up so miserable. 

 

Although I haven’t read Yates previously, his resounding themes of loneliness and the middle class struggle for fulfillment are indeed witnessed in the Grimes’ struggle for happiness and lives of meaning. 

 

Sarah takes a conventional path in her life, marrying early and punching out three boys in quick succession. Yates doesn’t linger on the joys of life – the initial ecstasy of young love, the highs and lows of motherhood, the connections one finds in relationships – but focuses instead on the struggles – alcoholism, divorce, losing a parent to dementia, domestic violence, loneliness. I bet Yates was a hoot at cocktail parties.

 

Emily takes a less conventional path, establishing a career, dating and sleeping with a lot of different men, eventually marrying a man who isn’t able to perform sexually and, as Emily would learn later, actually hates women. She never marries again and the men in her life come and go. When the last, Howard, goes, Emily succumbs to terrible loneliness. With the death of Sarah, she begins to fixate on the circumstances of her death since she knew Sarah’s husband, Tony, was abusive.

 

Although Emily knows she could benefit from therapy, the process of receiving therapy was marvelously difficult to obtain, including going to Bellevue Hospital and being assessed by a psychologist. And what if they deemed you “crazy”? Would they commit you without your will? Nevertheless, Emily seems destined to become a crazy and bitter old woman.

 

I love these older novels and I have such a hankering to read Revolutionary Road, although it’s not currently on my list. Though Yates packs a brutal bunch, I don’t need my reality spoon-fed to me and enjoy a cynical point of view.

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