Book Review: "Young Hearts Crying" by Richard Yates

Richard Yates, author of "Revolutionary Road" and "Easter Parade" once wrote an emotionally disturbing book called "Young Hearts Crying" and I am not going to lie, it was pretty upsetting to read. The book is about a woman called Lucy and her husband, Michael. Michael wants to be a writer after becoming one of those disillusioned young people after the second world war. Lucy is a second generation rich girl who has millions in the bank that she is saving for her children. When Laura is born as their daughter, their lives become emotionally unstable as Michael tries to justify his behaviour as a sexist, classist and often a racist whilst also practically ignoring his wife's emotional needs. So they divorce. But the story does not end there. Not for Michael anyway - who goes on to suffer emotional breakdowns amongst other losses.

This book really shows us the way in which the American Dream can collapse so quickly if you take things forgranted. Michael is a whole-heartedly unlikeable character even though he thinks that he is doing good. He doesn't have any bad intentions, but his actions do not reflect a good and stable character. Whereas, Lucy is taken for face value as dumber than she actually is and on the inside she is quite an intelligent woman who seeks to pick herself up again after the divorce. As we move through their lives we realise that they both had a very different idea of what the American Dream was and that Lucy's was far more attainable and respectful whereas Michael's only really included his own needs.

The language in the book is remarkable in the way it talks about human interaction and the way it flows perfectly from one incident to the next:

"He had established a working alcove in one corner of the attic at their Larchmont house - it wasn't much but it was private - and he would look forward all day to the hours he could spend alone there. He had begun to feel that his book was almost in shape again, almost done, if only he could bring off the long, ambitious final poem that was meant to justify and carry all the others. He had an adequate working title for it, 'Coming Clean' but certain lines of it stubbornly refused to be brought alive; whole sections of it seemed ready to collapse or evaporate under his hand. On most nights he worked in the attic until he ached with fatigue but there were other times when he couldn't get his brains together, when he would sit there stupified in a paralysis of inattention, smoking cigarettes and despising himself, until he went back downstairs to bed."

In conclusion, I have found that though Richard Yates' language is made to seem like Michael is a man with a plan, this model of the American Citizen searching for the great dream, I do feel like he does this on purpose just so that when he breaks the dream down he can reveal all these various dark sides to his personality. Some of these shock us, but definitely do not surprise us in his era of American History. It becomes a cyclic reality, a boredom, a guilt and ultimately, it ends up destroying this almost impulsiveness that the American Dream stands for. I think Yates definitely wanted it this way in order to show us that if you do not change your views with the changing times, there is a requirement for you to decline and fall on the wrong side of history. Michael is not a person, but a representation of many people who chose the same thing.