Let me count the ways that I love Richard Yate's style of prose. He again describes two or more largely detestable characters, yet the story and their fate is so intriguing that you keep on reading and find yourself even feeling sorry for their screwed up minds.

Enter Lucy and Michael Davenport, again a young enigmatic promising couple like the one described in Revolutionary Road, yet there are some differences. Lucy is a millionaire, yet Michael is too proud to rely on her money and gets a job while trying to make a name for himself as an earnest talented poet. They even move to the countryside with their daughter Laura to live in a shabby run-down house. Both of them feel very drawn to artsy people as if befriending them would elevate their refinement and talent, which seems to me very pathetic.

Michael is struggling with his work and his job, is deeply troubled by insecurity and still possesses an arrogance that makes him downright detestable and it is no surprise that his and Lucy's marriage ends in divorce. Lucy is also frustrated that the man she has attached herself to, who showed so much promise is an mediocre artist at best, because that is her thing: attaching herself to men obsessed with their art and this is what she continues doing after the divorce. When all this becomes unfruitful she decides to dabble in writing and painting with only decent results.

Michael on the other hand is almost addicted to the validation he gets from sex with mostly younger girls and tries to write poems until he has a series of psychotic episodes and decides to take up a teaching job. He only becomes less intolerable when he rescues his now teenage daughter from an unfortunate trip to San Francisco.

It is a story of unhappiness of trying to find deeper meaning in your existence through art and the expectations set in yourself and the art you produce. It is sad, vulnerable and a harsh critique of the chauvinistic American male who suddenly finds his view of the world and women deeply challenged.