Revolutionary Road
By Richard Yates

Frank and April Wheeler meet in New York. He has bohemian ideas; she is a woman who believed that she was going to be something special among a group of special people. After they move to the suburbs, you see quite clearly the isolation they feel once severed from the city. In the moments when the two are happy, you see how happiness can be reignited in a relationship that's starting to go sour, but they insist on seeing themselves as a kind of golden couple, destined for a more glamorous life. It's really a story about disappointment—and how that can destroy one's soul. [Winslet plays April in a movie based on the book, co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by her husband, Sam Mendes, in theaters in December.]