Dodsworth

1929, 1960 Laurel edition
Sinclair Lewis
Dodsworth
Original price unknown, bought used for $1.50
Poor condition paperback
B-

While the view of upper-middle-class Americans traveling through Europe in the 1920s is interesting, including an early look at both Italian Fascism and a German gay bar, I got tired of the Dodsworths' marriage long before Sam Dodsworth did.  Fran is so obviously a spoiled, hypocritical, hypercritical bitch that I couldn't see how it took Sam more than 20 years to see through her.  And at that, as the handwritten note on the back flap asks, "How do you account for last four words?", the book ending, "He was so confidently happy that he completely forgot Fran and he did not again yearn for her, for almost two days."  And this is after he's seemingly found his ideal woman.  As much as a Colette novel, this is a story of unhappily masochistic love.  Again, wife-beating is joked about, but it's Sam who's bullied verbally, while everyone who isn't a frivolous European tells Sam how wonderful he is. 

Not coincidentally, Lewis's first marriage broke up in 1925, and in '28 he married journalist Dorothy Thompson, whom this novel is dedicated to.  (No relation to Ruth Plumly, although RPT did have a sister named Dorothy.)