day 1 of the 30 day book challenge

Day 01. Best book you read last year

Honestly, I can't remember what I read this year. There are several that stick out, but I know there are so many that I am missing. The book I remember most–because of the main character and because of the emotions I had surrounding my reading of it–is Main Street by Sinclair Lewis.

With his sixth novel, Lewis found real success. What I look for most in writing is a true understanding of the characters the author is creating. Do they truly feel for this person or does something seem amiss? In this novel, Lewis submerges himself in the characters; they become fully realized as we wade through their daily interactions and, like the protagonist, begin to feel like we're drowning in shallow waters. Powell's Books describes it in this way:

...Main Street shattered the sentimental American myth of happy small-town life with its satire of narrow-minded provincialism. Reflecting his own unhappy childhood in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis's sixth novel attacked the conformity and dullness he saw in midwestern village life. Young college graduate Carol Milford moves from the city to tiny Gopher Prairie after marrying the local doctor, and tries to bring culture to the small town. But her efforts to reform the prairie village are met by a wall of gossip, greed, conventionality, pitifully unambitious cultural endeavors, and worst of all the pettiness and bigotry of small-town minds.

The story is our story. It's what I feel every time I think about the changes I would like to see in our country, every time I try to keep faith in the future of the world. These feelings must have been even more acute in the 1920s, when the book was published and the States was pushing for women's liberation, sexual liberation and the right to drink alcohol again. They were making one of the country's biggest pushes toward modern life.


One of the strongest themes in the book attached to this struggle is Carol's feminist slant–still surprising at this time to be coming from a male author. She is on a quest to change the town, bring them into the modern world she once lived in and create an identity separate from her "well-known" husband. I know this book wound stay with me when I read this quote, still one of my absolute favorites:

It's work–but not my work. I could run an office or a library, or nurse and teach children. But solitary dish-washing isn't enough to satisfy me--or many other women. We're going to chuck it. We're going to wash 'em by machinery, and come out and play with you men in the offices and clubs and politics you've cleverly kept for yourselves! Oh, we're hopeless, we dissatisfied women! Then why do you want to have us about the place, to fret you? So it's for your sake that I'm going!

 And I'll leave you with that powerful statement, a thank you to all the women that said it so I wouldn't have to (as loudly) and a hope that you'll share your response to Day 1 in the comments.