The Easter Parade

Description

'The Easter Parade is the best modern novel I have read this year' Julian Barnes Even as little girls, Sarah and Emily are very different from each other. Emily looks up to her wiser and more stable older sister and is jealous of her relationship with their absent father, and later her seemingly golden marriage. The path she chooses for herself is less safe and conventional and her love affairs never really satisfy her. Although the bond between them endures, gradually the distance between the two women grows, until a tragic event throws their relationship into focus one last time.

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, and Disturbing the Peace, and two collections of short stories, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love. He died in 1992.

Poignant tale... His tales are wonderfully gloomy and self-referential. -- Jancis Robinson * Waitrose Weekend * [The Easter Parade is] Richard Yates' best novel, which makes it wonderful. From the first sentence to the last...I loved the book -- Joan Didion Few men since Flaubert have offered such sympathy to women whose lives are hell -- Kurt Vonnegut One of the United States' finest post-war novelists and short-story writers.He wrote some of the best fiction of his generation; it continues to give pleasure to all those readers who are fortunate enough to discover it * Independent * A brave, brilliant book * Sunday Herald *