Peyton Place
by Grace Metalious
Peyton Place is one of the greatest novels ever written. There, I've said it. It's overly dramatic, incredibly dated, terribly soapy, and much of the fiction is based on fact, but it has yet to be bested, despite decades of authors' attempts. Peyton Place redefined dramatic literature, continuing where Balzac left off and making an invaluable genre accessible to a new generation. Grace Metalious wasn't the first author to expose secrets in a small town, but her novel that "shocked the nation" (according to the re-release tagline) inspired thousands of duplicate stories in the decades to come. Desperate Housewives wouldn't exist if Peyton Place hadn't been written.
Peyton Place is a small New England town, and in the 1940s and 1950s, the residents are expected to live up to certain social standards. Underneath the surface, great scandals brew, ready to be uncovered. If you've never seen the movie, I'm hesitant to give away any more of the plot. Sufficed to say, premarital sex, marital troubles, unplanned pregnancies, violence, and substance abuse are certainly not encouraged in Peyton Place. If any of the residences engage in such salacious activities, they risk utter ruination. Cover-ups are the norm in Peyton Place, but since this is a novel, some dams are bound to burst.
If your taste runs anything like mine does, you will love this book. If you like soap operas, small town scandals, and 1950s-style steaminess, you'll enjoy Metalious's local epic. Get ready to say in-between chapters, "All this happened in one town?"
The addicting plot and fascinating characters aside, I love the writing style of Ms. Metalious. There are only a few books I've read whose prose fill me with such emotion that I feel chills down my arms, tears in my eyes, and a haunting in my heart. Read the opening passage. If it doesn't move you, then check out another book from the library. If it does, you've just found your new best friend.
Opening Passage:
Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay. In northern New England, Indian summer puts up a scarlet-tipped hand to hold winter back for a little while. She brings with her the time of the last warm spell, an unchartered season which lives until Winter moves in with its backbone of ice and accoutrements of leafless trees and hard frozen ground. Those grown old, who have had the youth bled from them by the jagged edged winds of winter, know how sorrowfully that Indian summer is a sham to be met with hard-eyed cynicism. But the young wait anxiously, scanning the chill autumn skies for a sign of her coming. And sometimes the old, against all the warnings of better judgment, wait with the young and hopeful, their tired, winter eyes turned heavenward to seek the first traces of a false softening.
One year, early in October, Indian summer came to a town called Peyton Place.
Be sure to read Hot Toasty Rag's review of Return to Peyton Place here!
Peyton Place is a small New England town, and in the 1940s and 1950s, the residents are expected to live up to certain social standards. Underneath the surface, great scandals brew, ready to be uncovered. If you've never seen the movie, I'm hesitant to give away any more of the plot. Sufficed to say, premarital sex, marital troubles, unplanned pregnancies, violence, and substance abuse are certainly not encouraged in Peyton Place. If any of the residences engage in such salacious activities, they risk utter ruination. Cover-ups are the norm in Peyton Place, but since this is a novel, some dams are bound to burst.
If your taste runs anything like mine does, you will love this book. If you like soap operas, small town scandals, and 1950s-style steaminess, you'll enjoy Metalious's local epic. Get ready to say in-between chapters, "All this happened in one town?"
The addicting plot and fascinating characters aside, I love the writing style of Ms. Metalious. There are only a few books I've read whose prose fill me with such emotion that I feel chills down my arms, tears in my eyes, and a haunting in my heart. Read the opening passage. If it doesn't move you, then check out another book from the library. If it does, you've just found your new best friend.
Opening Passage:
Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay. In northern New England, Indian summer puts up a scarlet-tipped hand to hold winter back for a little while. She brings with her the time of the last warm spell, an unchartered season which lives until Winter moves in with its backbone of ice and accoutrements of leafless trees and hard frozen ground. Those grown old, who have had the youth bled from them by the jagged edged winds of winter, know how sorrowfully that Indian summer is a sham to be met with hard-eyed cynicism. But the young wait anxiously, scanning the chill autumn skies for a sign of her coming. And sometimes the old, against all the warnings of better judgment, wait with the young and hopeful, their tired, winter eyes turned heavenward to seek the first traces of a false softening.
One year, early in October, Indian summer came to a town called Peyton Place.
Be sure to read Hot Toasty Rag's review of Return to Peyton Place here!