Peyton Place

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

'Sinclair Lewis would no doubt have hailed Grace Metalious as a sister-in-arms against the false fronts and bourgeois pretentions of allegedly respectable communities' New York Times Book Review

UK Kirkus review

First published in 1956, Grace Metalious's story of scandal and prejudice in small-town New England was greeted at the time of its publication with gasping moral outrage, and recordbreaking sales. It's much less shocking now, but it's still easy to see why it caused such a reaction - illegitimate pregnancies, abortion, sexually aggressive women, incest and drunkenness were not exactly staples of the post-war novel. However, Peyton Place is far from being just a lurid tale of moral infamy. Metalious's sharp pen draws a harsh but believable picture of the town, gradually highlighting the dark areas behind the respectable surface. Women's sexuality and male reactions to it are at the heart of many family dysfunctions. Allison MacKenzie is beginning to discover her sexuality, while her repressed mother is terrified that her long-ago adulterous affair will come to light. On the other side of the tracks Selena Cross is being brutally abused by her stepfather, until she finally decides to take the law into her own hands. But it's not all misery - Metalious has an eye for the lighter side of community life as well, and the scene in which the town drunks are hauled out of the cellar where they've been on a six-week binge brilliantly combines humour and pathos. Altogether, then, this is a novel that is still well worth reading, not only - or even mainly - for the elements that made it famous, but for the author's piercing but always sensitive insights into the tangled personalities and emotions that make up human existence. (Kirkus UK)