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Peyton Place Hardscrabble Books Grace Metalious Ardis Cameron 9781555534004 Books

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Peyton Place Hardscrabble Books Grace Metalious Ardis Cameron 9781555534004 Books

PEYTON PLACE did indeed sell a million copies -- several millions by now -- and inspired a movie, a sequel, and a long-running television soap opera. The story of meek Allison McKenzie, growing up in the late Thirties in a hypocritical mill town in New England in the household of a demanding mother, fascinated many. Yes, some of the language is coarse, but it's naturally coarse language. Allison's friend, through no real fault of her own, gets involved in a legal wrangle about exactly the kind of things Peyton Place "doesn't talk about," which forms the moral and dramatic core of the book. PEYTON PLACE deserves to be read, even today, though I'd recommend skipping the Foreword because it gives too much of the plot away.


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Peyton Place Hardscrabble Books Grace Metalious Ardis Cameron 9781555534004 Books Reviews

I am probably one of the last people on the planet to read this book. As a very young boy in the 50's, I remember my parents reading this book and talking about it in hushed tones (and hiding it from me along with the National Enquirer). Of course by today's standards, this is tame (certainly not a "50 Shades of anything"). But from the perspective of 2014, I found the descriptions and depicted attitudes to be fascinating - the discussions of race, incest, homosexuality, abortion, religion, premarital sex, any kind of sex. But the book is not about sex, it is about people. This book, at least the title, has become an icon. You can use the phrase "Peyton Place" in a sentence and everyone will know what you mean. The book, set in the 30's and 40's, describes a simpler time, but at the same time, portrays a very complex time in our history. It is not just Small Town America put on display, but human nature is depicted in accurate detail. Some of the story line is "corny" and not very sophisticated, but I can imagine how this book hit the straight laced public in the 50's.
It's fascinating to read "Peyton Place" today. In the 1950s, the runaway bestseller was notorious for its lurid descriptions of small town life, sex and violence in New England. Banned in some towns and libraries, it was the kind of book parents hid from their children and that children did anything to read.

Even though the range of acceptable subject matter has broadened considerably since the 1950s, there are still passages in "Peyton Place" that shock with their blunt and explicit descriptions a girl having sex for the first time; the brutal incestuous attacks of a man on his stepdaughter; covering up an illegal abortion and the illegitimacy of a child; weeks-long alcohol binges in a cider cellar; sexual yearning and experimentation among both youth and adults.

All of this occurs in the context of a riveting narrative that had me really caring about what happens to the main characters. There is Allison MacKenzie, a dreamy, sexually awakening teen who wants to be a writer; her mother Constance, who focuses on work and respectability while hiding a family secret; Tom Makris, the new school principal, who sets his sights on winning Constance; Selena Cross, a good, hard-working girl who protects her little brother while fending off her evil stepfather; Doctor Matthew Swain, who tends to everyone's physical and emotional ailments; Leslie Harrington, the rich businessman who controls the lives of his workers and much of Peyton Place; his son Rodney, sex-obsessed and irresponsible. There's also the town bad girl, the newspaperman, the spinster, etc. Some of these story lines are more effective than others; some aspects seem dated.

I think much of the shock factor of "Peyton Place" is how it destroys long held stereotypes of the bucolic New England countryside with its neat towns and quaint steepled churches, suggesting order and moral rectitude. Grace Metalious blew the lid off this perception with the seamy goings-on in "Peyton Place." That she was a woman writing so bluntly about sex and violence, poverty and corruption, added to the controversy.

The 1999 paperback edition I read includes a thoughtful introduction by Ardis Cameron, a Professor of New England Studies. Cameron says "Peyton Place" has, unfortunately, become "a mere code word for sexual scandal, rather than a map to chart what it hides." She sees it as "uncompromising in its attack on class inequities, poverty, male privilege and the sexual closet." She notes that most of the social consciousness of the novel was eliminated from the 1960s TV series. It's a great essay that enhanced my understanding of a very compelling book.
Grace Metalious (1924-1964) was New England mill town girl who married her high school sweetheart, struggled in poverty while he went to college on the G.I. Bill, and then found herself the wife of a school principal in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. It was not a role she relished Metalious had a deeply ingrained rebellious streak and she was dismissive of small town society. Battening on stories of small town scandal, and herself the subject of small town disapproval, the novel she produced rocked and shocked the American reading public. What most novels implied, the 1956 PEYTON PLACE flatly specified, and its subjects included illegitimacy, rape, abortion, murder, alcoholism, venereal disease, suicide, and incest. Critics didn’t like it, but the public did, and it leaped onto the New York Times best seller list and stayed there for over a year. The book’s title has become an immediately recognized byword for gossipy scandal and small town hypocrisy.

Set just before and after World War II, PEYTON PLACE presents a portrait of a small New England mill town of the sort that Metalious grew up in and lived in for most of her life. The book shifts between characters and storylines, so it is both episodic and expansive, but in a general way it centers on three characters Constance MacKenzie, her daughter Allison, and Allison’s friend Selena Cross. Connie is a striking attractive woman who lived in New York and returned to Peyton Place as a widowed mother. She seems a very respectable woman—but she harbors a secret she was never married and her naïve daughter is illegitimate. Selena Cross, in contrast, is a girl born on the wrong side of the tracks, and Connie doesn’t approve of Allison’s friendship with her. Connie and Allison are often at odds, and curiously enough, Connie gradually forms a bond with Selena, who comes to work at Connie’s dress shop. But Selena has secrets far darker than Connie’s, and when they become public the town explodes with scandal.

Metalious based Selena and the scandal that surrounds her on Barbara Roberts, a woman from the area who was at the center of an infamous 1947 court case, and many of her subplots were straight out of Gilmanton gossip. It was all super hot at the time, but what made the book such a spectacular success was its tone. It’s pretty obvious that Metalious was furious at the tittle-tattle directed her way, that she’s venting her fury and frustration, and she’s enjoying every moment of it. The book is rife with red hot fury and steaming with savage glee, and while many of the scandals Metalious describes won’t really raise an eyebrow now, her narrative power makes PEYTON PLACE a page-turner even today. It’s juicy, to say the least.

A good many people come to the novel from the 1957 movie starring Lana Turner, Diane Varsi, and Hope Lange, but Hollywood’s self-censorship codes didn’t really allow for an accurate screen version, and Metalious’ novel is softened and romanticized, with most characters suffering through their various crises to arrive at happy endings—something that doesn’t happen in the novel. Suffice to say that such characters as Rodney Harrington and Norman Page, among others, don’t fare nearly so well in the book as they do in the film. But you’ll have to read the book to find out. It may not be great literature, but it’s a great read. Recommended.

GFT, Reviewer
PEYTON PLACE did indeed sell a million copies -- several millions by now -- and inspired a movie, a sequel, and a long-running television soap opera. The story of meek Allison McKenzie, growing up in the late Thirties in a hypocritical mill town in New England in the household of a demanding mother, fascinated many. Yes, some of the language is coarse, but it's naturally coarse language. Allison's friend, through no real fault of her own, gets involved in a legal wrangle about exactly the kind of things Peyton Place "doesn't talk about," which forms the moral and dramatic core of the book. PEYTON PLACE deserves to be read, even today, though I'd recommend skipping the Foreword because it gives too much of the plot away.