Customer Reviews

Peyton Place

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I first read "Peyton Place" when it was still considered hot stuff and just re-read the book to see how it had held up. Nobody would read it today just for the sexual frankness, when any R-rated movie or bestselling novel can use much more graphic language. But I enjoyed the book; it may not be great literature but it was a good read and not mere trash. Although the book was banned in many places in the Fifties, the kind of everyday profanity Peyton Place's citizens use struck me as pretty genuine.

The book runs from about 1937 to 1944. The central character is Allison McKenzie, but there are any number of characters whose consciousness the author easily slips into: Allison's emotionally distant mother Constance, the new school superintendent Tom Makris, the town doctor Matt Swain, Allison's poverty-stricken friend Selena Cross, dedicated teacher Elsie Thornton and many others. I think it's one of the virtues of this book that Metalious creates so many believable characters, both male and female, with such apparent ease and economy.

Peyton Place the town is a major character in the book, and everyone lives in fear of it, because it demands the appearance of perfection from all its citizens and thus condones hypocrisy and condemns human frailty. But Peyton Place isn't unique; it's a microcosm of a sexually repressive society. If someone describes your office as "a regular 'Peyton Place'," you can bet that harassment follows in the path of the hijinks. Big city or small town, there's a little "Peyton Place" in us all, even in these more liberated times.

I would recommend that readers save the introduction to the novel until after they have read it because it gives too much of the plot away.

The clear, eloquent writing of Metalious immediately seized my attention. The steady, powerful development of characters aroused my interests and kept me eagerly anticipating their experiences. The damnation of this literary jewel in 1956 provides excellent insight to the era. Although much has changed since 1956; the scandals, struggles and experiences depicted in the novel seem to have remained the same. I read this book thinking that there would be vast differences in what would have constituted a scandal then versus now. What I learned is that people's behavior hasn't changed much at all but our reactions have become more muted, and our tolerance greater. Peyton Place is a depiction of life. Then and now. Change the publication date and the characters, and experiences are as true now as they were then. Mitalious managed to capture the essence of life conflict and struggle in a manner that is timeless and continuous. I'll read this book again in 20 years and I expect that it will still provide a realistic view of life experiences and behavior. This novel is a must in everyone's library!

When I first read Peyton Place upon its publication in 1956 this book was considered highly immoral and downright trashy. What kind of woman must this Grace Metalious be to pen such a book? Sinful, sinful was the common consensus. It is a pity that Metalious did not live to see its reprinting. Reading it now from the vantage point of almost 2000, one is shown the underbelly of a small New England town, with all its conflicts and crosscurrents. The story is told simply, with clarity and truth. Shining through is a deep compassion for the weaknesses and failings of humankind. Living in such a town as Peyton Place, the author knew what she was writing about and it shows. Read this book again if you read it before. First time readers, see how simple honesty, skillfully portrayed in the stories of small town life spun here, makes for an exceptionally well written book even in 1999!

My mother, who was born and raised in New Hampshire, and I were having a conversation about books one afternoon. I told her that I had seen someone on the subway with a copy of Peyton Place, which inspired her to launch into some stories of the controversy that had surrounded the book upon its publication, and the scandal that reverberated through small-town New England, with each town trying to figure out if they were the subject of Metaliouss work.
I finally read Peyton Place several years ago, long after it wasnt hot stuff or controversial. Certainly it isnt shocking by todays standards but the book presents an interesting view of 1950s America, far removed from the soda pop and sundae image that nostalgia has tried to recreate.
The story centers around Allison McKenzie, a girl coming of age and facing all of the challenges of growing up in a small town without a father. Her mother, Constance, is emotionally distance at the novels beginning but warms steadily as she undertakes a romance of her own. Matt Swain is presented as the doctor with a conscience, and the impoverished Cross family provides an ample contrast to the genteel country setting. The book, in many ways, reminds me of Edith Wharton- characters whose lives are woven together in a tremendous fabric of narrative and insight. All characters seem to struggle with the perceived morality forced upon them by the social morays of life in a small town, and the manner in which the deal with problems provides much of the plot that propels this book. In short, this book is wonderful and probably on my top three or four lists of favorites. Its exciting without being tawdry, and something I wish I had read a long time ago.

Released at a time when the publishing industry rarely released novels which weren't inspirational or traditionally wholesome, Grace Metalious's still critically disregarded Peyton Place (1956) radically changed the course of American publishing. Reputed to have outsold every other title of its era with the exception the Bible, Peyton Place was considered scandalous at best and obscene for its frank assessment of human sexuality at worst. The novel was typically purchased and read in secrecy; despite its publication in the post-Kinsey era, a generation of readers looked to the book as a potential instructional manual in the rudiments of sexual intercourse.

But Peyton Place was hardly unprecedented: Erskine Caldwell's hugely popular Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933) both contained tart and undisguised sexual content, while Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar (1948) provided its audience with a straight forward examination of homosexuality.

Peyton Place is a well written (a single short chapter, intended to be humorous, about race and flatulence, which certainly should have been cut, mars the otherwise pristine prose), economically told, and psychologically astute expose of the lives of the citizens of a small New Hampshire town. Though the town is divided into warring Roman Catholics and Protestants, it is the high WASP culture that receives the brunt of Metalious's umbrage throughout. Taking place in the 1930s and 1940s, the book immediately assumes--and never relaxes--an unblinking ethical and moral stance against the hypocrisies of American cultural life. Like a Fury out of Greek myth, Metalious mercilessly pursues--and eventually punishes--those who marry for wealth, prestige and other forms of personal gain, the arrogant, the pretentious, the greedy, the actively insensitive, the coarse, the cowardly, and the brutal.

Peyton Place is a town with at least one literal skeleton hanging in its closets--as well as a hotbed of scheming wives, adulterous husbands, abusive and domineering spouses, calculating couples, daughters who have been raped by their stepfathers, sons smothered by their `devouring' mothers, and children of privilege spoiled in every conceivable manner. There are alcoholics who collectively go on six week binges, ethics-torn doctors, passive young boys who learn to crave enemas, romantically frustrated "widows," despairing teachers, callous paramours, sexually licentious young girls, faithless church leaders, petty minded, vengeful gossips, and at least one reclusive woman considered to be insane by the surrounding community.

But despite their stereotypical modes of behavior, Metalious's characters are never mere stereotypes or reductive caricatures. Nor is Peyton Place wholly a cesspool, though most of its very human characters are actively tainted with `sin' of some kind: both Allison McKenzie and Selena Cross, the protagonists, are intelligent, curious, and inherently decent young women who strive to improve their lives. Mother-dominated Norman Page reads Swinburne and Thoreau and has intellectual aspirations, the influential Dr. Swain fights for the rights of the poor and the oppressed, while virile interloper and school principal Tom Makris, perhaps the most balanced, rational, and realistically drawn character, speaks the blunt and unadorned truth to everyone he encounters.

In addition to the book's sexual content--which is indeed crisply pointed at times--what probably outraged most social leaders of the era was the presentation of the American small town--as well as the character of the typical American--as harsh, desperate, unforgiving, predatory, bigoted, shallow, and mean-spirited. While the author's barbed vision flew openly in the face of Fifties cultural sentimentality, Metalious, who died at the age of thirty-nine from alcoholism, was clearly an early rider on the wave that would sweep across the next decade, leaving little, if anything, of American's formerly emotionally idealistic opinion of itself intact.

Nor surprisingly, the novel, which was followed by a creatively and commercially successful sequel, inspired a fairly diluted, if rather polished, film adaptation (which in turn produced a sequel of its own), as well as a long-running television series.

Peyton Place is a fun read although hardly great literature,
thus the 3 stars. As a woman author writing a steamy
novel that focused on the inner lives of women, Grace was
well ahead of her time, and I applaud her courage and
outspokenness. But I found the novel overly
sensationalist; she could have made many of her points
without some of the gratuitous kink, particularly
in the life of the Norman character. Anyway, the reason I am
writing in is to explain to a prior reviewer the reason
for the name changes. I am reading "Inside Peyton Place",
Grace Metalious' biography, and apparently Grace
used the names of real people in the town she was
living in (Gilmanton, NH) for some of the PP characters.
One of them named Tom Makris brought a libel suit against
her, and as a result she had to change the name of that
character in the paperback, movie and television
versions of PP.

I loved "Peyton Place!" Written in 1956, this book caused a commotion when it was published due to its many illicit topics, which were considered very taboo at the time. More than 50 years later, this book still triumphs as an excellent portrayal of a small New England town full of mysterious characters and many hidden secrets.

Allison MacKenzie is the central character of the novel, which is set between 1937 and 1944. Allison is a young schoolgirl who struggles to find acceptance and contentment among her classmates and also pines away for her missing father. Meanwhile, Allison's mother, Constance, fights her attraction to the school's new headmaster, Tom Makris, while fighting to keep the truth about Allison's father under wraps. There are many other people roaming around Peyton Place, including Selena Cross, a classmate of Allison's who falls in love with the charming Ted Carter but hides the disturbing truth about the reality of her home life. Leslie Harrington is the richest man in town and is used to getting his way with everything, but he refuses to try and tame his son, Rodney, who spirals out of control. Add to the bunch a respected physician, two nasty spinster sisters, and the town drunks, and you have all the makings of a fantastic novel complete with violence, illegitimacy, sex, and everything else you could possibly ask for!

Yes, "Peyton Place" is kind of trashy in a "Valley of the Dolls" kind of way, but that doesn't change the fact that it's entertaining and brilliant. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to sink their teeth into a thoroughly engrossing story.

I got this set after reading an excerpt from the new biography of Grace Metalious in "Vanity Fair". I had never read the books, nor seen the movie or the TV series. I thought I would be in for some mildly entertaining reading, but was very pleasantly surprised to discover what a great writer Metalious was. She writes about the town of Peyton Place with beautiful descriptions (especially of seasonal changes in the weather and scenery, which she uses very effectively to develop the mood for each "episode") and delicious wit, but also with great feeling for her characters, loveable and otherwise. Her descriptions of the fashions and social customs of the 1930's and '40's are transporting. This is a great book to take one's mind off one's own cares and worries.
"Return To Peyton Place", although enjoyable reading, is not as successful as its predecessor (the most glaring disappointment being that Metalious changed the name of one of the main characters after a lawsuit against her by a man whose name was a little too similar to that of PP's "Tomas Makris"). I wish the author had spent more time developing some of the plot twists introduced, and had explained what had happened to some of the characters from the original novel (e.g., Norman Page). The combination of these two novels in one volume, however, provides great entertainment, and is well worth the purchase price.

Having grown up watching the TV series based on this 1956 novel, this reviewer had always intended to someday read the book. I now can certainly see what all the furor was about. Metalious engaged in some very risky writing for that quieter, more conservative time. While anything in this novel seens tame to innocuous by today's standards, after the steamy potboilers of Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel, the author's insights into the makeup and less bucolic underpinings of small-town life ring as true as ever. The characters of Alison MacKenzie and her mother, Constance, are vividly alive and resonate with grace and humanity long after the book is through. Metalious' style is often overblown and purple prose abounds, but it is all rather fun and refreshing after much of the bleakness of contemporary fiction.

Typically, the Kirkus review above pompously dismisses this as not being an "important" novel and decries its defender from academe as "puffery." Kirkus is well-known for such arrogant historionics and should be promptly ignored by the reading public.

When it was released in 1956, PEYTON PLACE, the debut novel by French Canadian Grace Metalious, caused quite a stir. Since its release, "Peyton Place" has entered American vocabulary as a term for something scandalous, and after reading the novel, it's easy to see why it is still well-known by readers of all ages today.

The novel chronicles the goings-on in a small New England town called Peyton Place (incidentally, named for a former slave). Peyton Place is a town of exactly 3675 individuals, where old men sit on wooden benches in front of the courthouse and the streets are all named for deciduous trees. There are three churches--one for the Protestants, one for the Catholics, and one for the "fire and brimstone" worshippers. Metalious' novel begins in Indian summer, with a detailed description of the town's layout--and, of course, the picture I formed of Peyton Place in my head looked a lot like those calendars you see with photographs of New England in autumn.

Of course, I didn't have to read too much of the novel to realize that this was Metalious' intention, and that New England was the perfect locale for her scandalous, brave story.

In PEYTON PLACE, readers soon learn, things are not as perfect as they appear. Underneath the peacefulness of the town lies a world of secret scandal. This novel is one with many protagonists, from the noble town doctor Matthew Swain to Constance MacKenzie, a seamstress desperate to hide her shady past. Through Metalious' omniscient narrative voice, readers are privy to a bevy of the townspeople's secrets, from the daily enemas given to Little Norman Page by his mother, to the child abuse of the worst kind occurrring in the Cross shack across town. Metalious tackles issues in PEYTON PLACE that are still relevant today: abortion, child abuse, physical and sexual mistreatment, alcoholism, infidelity, murder.

But don't let my description of the novel mislead you: PEYTON PLACE is no soap opera on paper. Metalious' discussions of these controversial issues are deftly rendered, sympathetically written; it is clear she was trying to do more with her tale than produce a piece of writing that was indecent for indecency's sake. The sex scenes, for instance, are written so differently from the rest of the novel that it's obvious Metalious was making a point about the course of women's fiction in the '50s. Her characters are a delight to discover; this novel, despite some opinions to the contrary, is actually well-written. The novel's heartwrenching, serious discussion of issues that other novelists of the time dared not touch, as well as its social commentary that is still relevant today, will secure it a place as one of America's most groundbreaking novels far into the future.