Publisher's Synopsis
Main Street brought Sinclair Lewis to notice of America. At first glance, the novel is an indictment of small-town values and the frustrated dreams of the heroine, Carol Kennicott. But a closer look tells a different story. Carol's bourgeois viewpoint is not without fault in her difficulties fitting in to life in Gopher Prairie, and while her husband is, at times, portrayed as a cariacature, he is also not without humanity. Toward the end of the book, Lewis writes of Carol that, "her active hatred of Gopher Prairie" had run out, and such seems to be the case with Lewis as well. He may have started the novel off with the idea of skewering every aspect of small town life, but by the close of the tale, it seems that he too has exhausted his hatred of small-town life and while not blind to its shortcomings and foibles is at least at peace with them.
