Helpful Score: 2
This book has vitually no plot but doesn't need one. The day-to-day accounting of life in a small town keeps the story moving quickly all the way through to the end. The main character, Carol, is annoying but endearing with her neverending schemes and ideas. The attitudes and language of both men and women in a small town is incredibly real and hasn't changed much since 1920. It seems to me that there was a "Main Street" in almost every job environment I've experienced. If you have ever lived in a small town, you will intimately know every character in this story. For one of the best quotes you will ever read, check out the third paragraph on page 305. Feel free to email with any questions. ~LeAnn
Helpful Score: 1
A fiercely satiric portrait of small-town America, it created a sensation when it first appeared in 1920. If not the most important revelation of American life ever made it was the most infamous libel upon it. It is a brilliant blend of social criticism and a dramatic struggle for self-expression.
The lonely predicament of Carol Kennicott, caught between her disires forr social reform and individual happiness, reflects the postition in which America's turn-of-the century "emancipated woman" found herself.
excellent classic by Lewis...
Sinclair is very depressing in this book and it is over 500 pages long. Can't say I will read another one of his books.
This is Sinclair Lewis' first great novel that made his reputation, and is one of the best works by an American author in the 20th century.
in this classic satire of small-town America, beautiful young Carol Kennicott comes to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, with dreams of transforming the provincial old town into a place of beauty and culture. But she runs into a wall of bigotry, hypocrisy and complacency. The first popular bestseller to attack conventional ideas about marriage, gender roles, and small town life, Main Street established Lewis as a major American novelist.
While maybe meant to be a work of sarcasm, it morphed to something else over the years since it was written. Now, after reading it again, I believe it's somewhat humorous. Lewis' political leanings are not-so-subtly thrust at the reader to the point of being funny. It's a good read, though, and worth the time to relive what life was like in small town America early in the 20th century.
Thanks to PaperBack Swap, not only have I read and now do I hold this Classic book by Sinclair Lewis titled, Main Street, in my personal library as a "keeper"; my grown adult children will experience this precious paperback copy as I age.
Great Story
