Grace Metalious (1924–1964)

This is the book that set the benchmark for every soap opera and drama of small town America that followed, and it’s almost shocking to find that it’s so well written. I’m not going to dwell on the plot – I’ll leave you to discover that if you decide to read it – it has big themes and it’s got a little of everything; and although people will always dwell on the bad things that are going on behind the town’s closed doors, there is good too.

The three main characters are all show more women and they’re all very believable and well-drawn. Constance MacKenzie returned to Peyton Place from New York where she had an illegitimate daughter Allison and now she poses as a widow and runs a dress shop. Allison who is somewhat of a shy and swotty type wants to be a writer. Her best friend is Selena Cross, who is a ‘shack-dweller’ from the poor side of town where she lives with her mad mother, nasty step-father, and younger brother. When the story starts Allison and Selena are just teenagers, and it follows them over a period of several years as they blossom into young women – most of the book centres around one or more of the three.

The two other stand-out characters are Doctor Swain who is a good-hearted man, and Tomas Makris – the exotic new school headmaster, who falls for Constance. A whole cast of others support them as we hear all the stories about the townsfolk – from the town drunks who lock themselves in a cellar full of booze for winter, to the teenager who is maimed when a fairground ride goes wrong, and then there are the Harringtons – the richest family in town. Our book group liked the episodic feel of the stories – as if she’d had TV rights in mind when she wrote it – the town drunks, and with the fairground maiming it would end with a da-da-DAH! as you don’t find out what happened to the girl until later.

What was almost as interesting as the book itself was reading some background about Metalious. My 2002 edition had an essay by an American academic which was fascinating. Metalious was the product of a broken home and grew up in poverty but she always wanted to write. She married and had kids, then aged thirty started to write the book that would make her world-famous in 1956, followed by three other novels. She died aged 39 of cirrhosis of the liver.

The book is clearly autobiographical – Metalious is Allison. Other characters were also rather real – she got into trouble over the character of Tomas Makris, and Selena was based on a real young woman too. As for the town of Peyton Place itself, it appears to be an amalgamation of several towns in the vicinity of Manchester and Gilmanton in New Hampshire where they lived. We holidayed in New Hampshire some years ago, stopping off in these very towns – I was very taken by one of them, Laconia, finding its lakeside location very pretty, and as she would say very ‘Ye Olde New Hampshire’. I thought that somewhere like that, just over an hour outside Boston would be a lovely place to live … However I’m know that every small town or community has its secrets and busybodies – twas ever thus. I suppose the fact that it was set in New England, where the strictly Puritan descendants of the Mayflower settled, makes the numbers of skeletons in closets more shocking.

This is a fantastic book – I’m very glad to have read this quintessential novel of 1950s America – Do read it! show less

This book can easily be taken out of context of its original closeted 50s: domestic abuse considered normal as long as you pay your taxes, alcoholism with no consequences but unwanted pregnancies and homosexuality hidden at all costs. For this, Cameron's introduction is a must read because it sets the stage: this novel is a shocker to be sure, full of terrible secrets, but it's also a critique of the times - the hypocrisy, the lies, the un-lived lives due to shame.
Passages of the book are show more lengthy (book 3 with Allison's pseudo-emancipation, notably), the weather imagery is rather heavy, but there are also some terrible, cruel remarks which resonate today still, including Harrington's buy-off of Betty Anderson or Swain's torment over his act.
This novel is a mix: soap opera and social critism - either way, the reader will be rewarded. show less

Peyton Place, a landmark of a book. Most people are familiar with at least the name and core concept of gossipy small town folks and their scandals, even if they aren’t aware of the novel’s existence.

The book covers roughly ten years in the life of an isolated, sleepy New England town from 1935 to 1945. There is no single central character. Instead, the book follows the intricate web between a large number of Peyton Place’s residents and the back-biting, bad mouthing and general show more hypocrisy that runs rampant through the town.

The book is much better written than I was expecting. It is rich in incidental details, showing an intimate portrait of an isolated New England town in the late 1930’s. Some of my favorite parts were throwaway details about ringing the bells for school or the old men sitting on the wooden benches in front of the court house. Peyton Place itself is probably the most prominent character in the book. Often Metalious uses quotes from unnamed characters to act as the ‘voice’ of Peyton Place.

Regardless, the book is not literary fiction. Rather, it revels in titillating details. I noticed over the course of the book that the narrative tended to wallow in the more salacious bits. At first, shocking secrets are presented pretty matter-of-factly. I got the feeling that the author felt more and more comfortable with her narrative as she wrote, because while the soap opera-like twists were always pretty breathtaking, as the story wound on they were presented more and more sensationally. I have to admit, it really did make the book more fun to read. Who doesn’t like tut-tutting over other folk’s dirty laundry?

I do think that the book is a cut above Jackie Collins/Danielle Steele trash fiction though. While Metalious crammed Peyton Place with enough hot details to fill an issue of the National Enquirer, she was also very clear in pointing out the hypocrisy in the way that New England was presenting itself to the rest of the country back then. The book was clearly at least semi-autobiographical (as the character Allison MacKenzie seems to closely resemble the author) and you can see that as gleeful as the author was in dragging out scandal of the place, she clearly had some fondness for her roots.

Lots of bad stuff happens in Peyton Place, but it is not all bad. There are still picnics in the woods, drowsy Indian summer days and townspeople helping each other out.

Whatever reputation it earned when originally published, the book is some kind of classic now. Fifty-plus years later, the book still holds a reader's interest. It is unquestionably dated, but it is a novel portraying a particular time and place, so that is not a strike against it. The only reason I didn't rate this one at five stars is that some of the dialog is stilted (though some of it is fantastic) and I felt toward the end that the story was getting a little long in the tooth.

All these years after the original publication of Peyton Place I was still often shocked while reading. The novel really does go for the sensational. But like Jean Shepherd’s purposely ‘anti-nostalgic’ reminiscences or the movie Pleasantville, it also tries to make you see that maybe the 'good old days' weren't so good for those that lived them. show less

If you read this, you'll see why it was so controversial in 1956. I suspect it gained such attention because it is also extremely well written and insightful. In the course of a few hundred pages, Metalious covers every major human vice. She also builds an engaging storyline about life in a small New England town. The characters debate the complexity of modern times through the simple ways these issues affect them. For example, the new school principal, a rare outsider, becomes a local and show more yet continues to challenge his friends' views about religion and relationships. What I like most about this book is the way the dialogue and character portrayals reflect the nuance of human psychology. Metalious efficiently shows us their inner conflict, and, as in reality, gives only some of them a life-changing moment where they are forced to resolve their own inner turmoil. show less