Book Review: The Easter Parade

Book #102 of 2010

“There were worse things in the world than being alone.” — Richard Yates, The Easter Parade

I’ve been wanting to read Yates quite a while. I was in a bookstore trying to chose between his books, and I picked up The Easter Parade. I was intrigued. I’d wanted to read Revolutionary Road, but I had recently seen the movie and I wanted to shake it out of my head before I read the book. So The Easter Parade it was. 

The novel follows two sisters, Emily and Sarah, throughout their lives. The opening line, “Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce”, makes it clear that their lives won’t be happy ones (and, to be honest, if you know anything about Yates it should be that). I read the book over a couple of days, completely engrossed in the characters, stopping only to stare at the sky and try to understand how I think people should act, and how I think my life will play itself out.

“But that was part of the trouble. She lived in memories all the time.”

The book was definitely emotive. Even if you don’t feel strongly for the characters (they are flawed, definitely, but sympathetic nonetheless), I think Yates successfully makes you think about how your life could change into something you don’t recognize without the reason for the change being necessarily bad. Emily, the book’s main protagonist, makes her share of awful decisions, but in the end, she isn’t a bad person. 

“Whenever she walked, and sometimes she walked for hours, she only found the past.”

Something that made me a little sad was when I posted the bolded quote (about being alone), a vast majority of the likes and reblogs happened on Christmas Day. There absolutely are worse things than being alone, and I suppose in the end it doesn’t matter if it’s a holiday or a normal day, but it hurt me a little to feel people’s pain.

The book is wonderfully written and I can’t wait to read more of his books. The man is a master. It’s depressing to think when he died none of his books were in print. I hate it when someone becomes famous after they die, I wish they could know the impact they made. When I shut this book, I went through a cacophony of emotions. I worried about ending up in a similar position, about dying alone, about never finding the person to share my life with. I worried about the problems in the world that seem like they’re going nowhere and of people in different walks of life who are trapped in lives they don’t want. Reading this book and The Road so close together was probably not very good for my mental health, but it definitely made for great reading.