Cold Spring Harbor

Description

A brilliantly written exploration of youth and self-delusion by the author of Revolutionary Road Evan Shepard is a young man with a chequered past when he first meets the Drakes, after his car breaks down outside their house. Behind him, he has a troubled adolescence, a failed marriage and a little daughter, but his meeting with the quiet and beautiful Rachel heralds a new start. However, after their swift marriage, things don't work out quite as planned and the stresses of living with Rachel's family, in their shared house in Cold Spring Harbor, begin to take their toll on the new couple.

Richard Yates was born in 1926 in New York and lived in California. His prize-winning stories began to appear in 1953 and his first novel, Revolutionary Road, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1961. He is the author of eight other works, including the novels A Good School, The Easter Parade, andDisturbing the Peace, and two collections of short stories, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love. He died in 1992.

Yates writes with a sympathy so clear-hearted that it often feels like nostalgia for his own youth, and yet he is also thoroughly uncompromising in revealing their capacity for self-delusion, their bewilderment in the face of failure * New York Times * So consistently well-written, just, unsentimental and sympathetic * Washington Post * Read and weep -- Kate Atkinson Yates's prose is as elegant and minimalist as ever... He simply tells the story - in easily comprehensible but perfectly pitched language -- Leyla Sanai * www.rocksbackpagesblogs.com *