Finished: Main Street (Lewis) A book about a young woman in the early 1900's who longs to be accepted as an educated, evolved woman when she marries a small town Minnesota doctor and goes back to live with him in the set-in-its-ways, gossip-thriving town. Things only go downhill for Carol Kennicott as she realizes that no one in the town wants to make any changes for the better....no one wants to hear her ideas on improvement, much less on literature or art or music...no one appreciates her flair for fashion. Everyone expects her to be a good little doctor's wife to Will Kennicott, a good-old boy who likes to hunt and hang out with the guys too. I'll give it to Will, though, he perseveres throughout the story, even though he does some things I'm not thrilled with...but he does love Carol and tries his hardest towards the end to evolve. Carol, for her part, spends far too much time in her own head and worrying about what people think of her...and with good reason...the town is a cesspool of gossip and busybodies. When she finally takes their little son, Hugh, and goes to Washington D.C. to find her way in the working world, she does find the fulfilment she wanted...but she also finds that there are just as many cliques in the workplace as there are in good ol' Gopher Prairie. She spends over a year there, and when Will comes to visit, they reconnect and she realizes that Gopher Prairie might not be so bad. She eventually goes back, pregnant with their second child and settles down to small town life again, this time more confident in herself, but still not in love with the stagnation of a small town.

I've had this book on my reading periphery, and thought it might be more a picture of quaint life in a small town...and less of an emotional, stressful journey of this one woman. It was pretty well written, and kept me interested, but certainly wasn't a terribly compelling book that I just couldn't put down. I'm glad I finally read a Sinclair Lewis book though! He wasn't on the list of Top 100 authors I went through three years ago. :-)