Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates

Holy moly, this is a brutal and brilliant novel, the last book I read in 2010 and also the best. A stark look at the gradual disintegration of an ostensibly happy couple’s dreams, the author inflicts psychological torture on the characters in an utterly believable way. Despite the characters’ obvious shortcomings we never lose our sympathy for them, which makes the the unravelling of their complacent but typical lives all the more painful.