Main Street by Sinclair Lewis -- Book Review

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[@mscrunchy68]

The women don't have high morals necessarily - they purport to have them while living lives horribly constricted by the social conventions of the time. Mrs Bogart, a widow, is constantly bleating on about morals while being toxic, self-serving and manipulative whilst entirely deluded about her own son who is a degenerate pillock. Carol is enticed to Gopher Prairie by Will on the promise that this is the place where she will be able to expand on her artistic and creative ambitions, only to have her wings clipped by his entrenched conservatism. What I love about this book is the author's ability to access the inner world of Carol - he is sympathetic but realistic and succeeds in a thousand subtle ways to convey the contradictions and frailty of human nature. Carol is unrealistic in many of her dreams and plans as to how to attain them but she is also always ready to reflect on and face her own shortcomings. This book is funny and heart-breaking in equal measure - I am so glad to have discovered it after reading an article about S.L. who, until then, had escaped my literary radar. What a find. This is truly a great novel. It plunges the reader right into the heart and minds of small town America in the early twentieth century and, reading it a hundred plus years after publication, adds a poignancy to the experience which is nothing short of exquisite. (I don't really pick up on similarities to Hemingway or Fitzgerald - but that is a harmless reflection of some readers on what is, after all, a highly subjective experience).

[@DavidPeacockChannel]

Yes, this novel exceeded my expectations.

[@Eurydice870]

I'm surprised. You managed to insult two very important American authors.

[@DavidPeacockChannel]

Each of the two Wikipedia pages for these authors also acknowledges the similarity.

[@deborahscotland8819]

I didn't see the description of Fitzgerald and Hemingway as artistic stylists in the least derogatory, in fact, it's an interesting comment on the different approaches that authors take. I think it would include something like Fitzgerald's use of Nick as character/narrator in The Great Gatsby, which adds so much to the novel.