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    Peyton Place
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    Peyton Place
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    Peyton Place
    Audiobook16 hours

    Peyton Place

    Written by Grace Metalious

    Narrated by Tim O'Connor

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    When Grace Metalious's debut novel about the dark underside of a small, respectable New England town was published in 1956, it quickly soared to the top of the bestseller lists. A landmark in twentieth-century American popular culture, Peyton Place spawned a successful feature film and a long-running television series-the first prime-time soap opera.

    Contemporary readers of Peyton Place will be captivated by its vivid characters, earthy prose, and shocking incidents. Through her riveting, uninhibited narrative, Metalious skillfully exposes the intricate social anatomy of a small community, examining the lives of its people-their passions and vices, their ambitions and defeats, their passivity or violence, their secret hopes and kindnesses, their cohesiveness and rigidity, their struggles, and often their courage.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 16, 2003
    ISBN9781415911570
    Unavailable
    Peyton Place
    Author

    Grace Metalious

    Grace Metalious was an American author who is best known for her scandalous yet highly successful novel, Peyton Place, which shocked Eisenhower-era America with its depiction of the sexual, class, and ethnic tensions roiling beneath the peaceful surface of a small New England mill town. Financially secure for the first time in her life, Metalious embraced a lavish lifestyle and continued to write, producing three more novels including Return to Peyton Place, The Tight White Collar, and No Adam in Eden. After years of heavy drinking, a troubled Metalious succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver in 1964.

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    Reviews for Peyton Place

    3.5/5

    359 ratings23 reviews

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    • 4/5
      First, I feel I should warn that if you've not read the book before and are not familar with the story, you should not read the introduction to the new edition. There are a couple spoilers contained in the intro. It wasn't enough to ruin the whole book for me, but I was disappointed to already know a couple of the plot twists.

      That said, I really enjoyed the book. I wasn't sure what to expect. I am, of course, familar with all the references to the book, and knew that it was scandalous at the time. Much like when I read "Valley of the Dolls," I was a bit amused to see what passed for racy back in the 60s. Certainly, there are salacious and scandalous plot twists, and sex is featured prominently in the book, but not in what I (a child of the 80s) would consider anything close to profane or offensive.

      Overall, a good book; an enjoyable and easy read. Probably not a classic in the traditional sense, but well worth a read to understand the still popular references to Peyton Place.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 5/5
      Wow. How did I not know about this book? Actually, I can tell you: it sounds like a boring book about a town where nothing happens. But what simmers beneath the nothing is like a look into the deep, dark corners of your soul. It illuminates the "dirty" corners that people were so worried about in 1956, but more importantly the thin veneers of respectability and tolerance we still struggle with 60 years later and which makes it so powerful today.
    • 4/5
      I decided to read this book because it's based in the state I live in and have heard alot about this book as I was growing up as it was released not long before I was born. It was considered a very racy book at the time. I really enjoyed this book and could imagine while I was reading where in NH this would have taken place. The characters fit that time and I felt it was well written.
    • 4/5
      I just finished reading Peyton Place by Grace Metalious. It was written in 1956, and considered very shocking for the day. It's about a small town with several shocking secrets like suicide, illegitimacy and death. I liked it very much and give it a B+!
    • 2/5
      Quite the shocking novel when it was first released, it really seems dated now. Metalious caused quite a ripple throughout the towns she based Peyton Place on. The Selena Cross storyline is probably the most interesting. The movie version of the novel took some different roads and, I think, improved the story. Hardscrabble's edition is very handsome as is its version of Return to Peyton Place.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 5/5
      I first read this book in the fall of 1982, while attending junior college. Having grown up in a town much like Peyton Place (a Mississippi town of about 300) I could relate to some of the attitudes and narrow mindedness of the characters. I can certainly understand why this was so controversial in the 1950s, but what I can't understand is how Grace Metalious was considered such a bad writer. I think the book is well-written and highly entertaining. I've read many articles about the publishing impact this book had on the US and the only thing I can figure out is that a lot of people were just plain jealous. Sure, this isn't Gone With the Wind, but it wasn't meant to be. To me, Peyton Place accomplishes what Grace Metalious herself said she set out to do: expose the hypocrisy and bigotry of people in a small town. I know first-hand that this type of behavior still exists. As a gay man in a small southern town, I have experienced much bigotry toward gay people. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read. Think about it, without this book would books such as Valley of the Dolls or Hollywood Wives have been published? There are authors now who make a career out of writing books that are a pale imitation to this one. Considering this book sold millions of copies and is still in print today, I think a quote from Grace Metalious explains it best, "If I am a terrible writer, then an awful lot of people have terrible taste."
    • 3/5
      I reluctantly picked up this book for a book group. Though the work certainly describes in prurient detail the behind closed doors life of small town people, it has a surprising literary quality to the writing which I found engaging. Though impossible to read the book now as it would have originally been received, it was still a worthwhile read and, perhaps, the mother of modern realistic fiction.
    • 3/5
      Peyton Place was scandalous when originally published for daring to depict things like incest, abortion, class differences, adultery, pre-marital sex, etc. I believe it was scandalous not because of the "smutty" content, but because readers did not want to believe that people really acted or thought like the characters. Yes, it seems sort of tame by today's standards, but it's still worth reading.I found it overly long, however; certain characters or events could have been edited right out and the reader would still have finished with the same impression.
    • 2/5
      I don't think Peyton Place holds up through time. Of course what was shocking then is mild now. Even so, the story is a little naive. Issues of incest make you wonder what the author experienced in her own life. The author's life itself is a better story. Still hats off to the recognition of women's sexuality in the 40s/50s.The Beans of Egypt Maine is the better story of small town New England.
    • 4/5
      Pretty risqué for the 1950s, but a useful book for understanding society.
    • 3/5
      Six-word review (1): Ah, for a more innocent time.orSix-word review (2): Okay, let's get this over with.The novel Peyton Place created a sensation when it first appeared in 1956. I had an extremely sheltered religious upbringing in the 1950s and 1960s, and it was barely whispered about in that setting, but even I was aware of it.The 1957 movie was likewise verboten (or perhaps even more so, because all movies were verboten, whereas books came in a wide range of flavors and degrees of waywardness). From my present vantage point, and knowing some things about my parents that I didn't know then, I'd guess they probably read it secretly and maybe even saw the movie; for which their good colleagues would have briskly commended them to hellfire. But I never read it, never saw it, never even saw a single episode of the TV series that ran from 1964 to 1969 and made Mia Farrow a star. I had no interest and wasn't even curious; naughtiness for its own sake didn't appeal to me. I took it for cheap trash, the novel equivalent of "true romance" magazines, and left it alone.(I made an important distinction between sheer naughtiness and principled rebellion, which was known territory to me, whether it meant long hair, bare feet, and musical protests or simply testing whether M&Ms would melt in my hand.)So now, here, in January of 2019, Peyton Place turned up in the neighborhood Little Free Library box when I was dropping off a Murakami novel, and I thought, "Why not?"This edition is a 1999 reissue, by Northeastern University Press, no less, with a cover tag "Fiction/Popular Culture" and an introduction that labels it "America's first blockbuster." There's a certain wry amusement in conjecturing that this might be assigned reading in some college course. I guess I'm not numb yet, even after decades of hearing Bob Dylan tunes transmogrified into elevator music.And now I've read it.Truthfully, it was a bit of a slog. I had to push myself to wade on through the dozens of characters, whose amplified backgrounds and omniscient-author internal monologues made me think they were going to be important characters. They commanded my sympathy, but in the end they just stood there with nothing to do, no more than a tree that just stands and waits for the seasons to change. The schoolteacher, for instance. I also waited for some dramatic moments that never came--that felt as if they were part of a suspenseful buildup (would Allison meet her father in New York?) but that just slipped away unrealized. It was more like a dense collection of character vignettes giving a fly's compound-eye view of the spectacle. I was about 150 pages in, about 40 percent, before something happened, and even at that it seemed pretty tame by 21st-century standards.And after all that, the ending seemed abrupt.There were a few semi-pithy passages and vivid lines, particularly those depicting a small-town New England way of life of bygone days that is still halfway familiar to me, just by osmosis, even though I grew up in a suburb close to Boston. I don't think I've heard anyone use "ride" as a transitive verb in this manner since I was a little girl: "You'd better let me ride you home." We used to say to one another, "Will you ride me on your bike?" The phrase hit my inner ear somewhere close to the place where I store the fragrance of burning leaves in autumn.So I read it and read it for a while, and eventually I came to the end of it. And that's the kind of book it was, for me.More than anything else, I'd say it made me nostalgic for a time when this would have been shocking--heaven knows it isn't now--and also for a touch of that New England quirkiness and odd little habits of speech that once seasoned my youth.I did pick up a few lines for my reading journal, and here's one of them. Allison is sure she knows how Ted would have behaved if he had really loved Selena, and Tom says: "There is such a thing as love not meeting a test, but that does not mean that it was not a kind of love to begin with." More insights like this and less overt courting of the "scandalous" label would have made it more of a novel.
    • 4/5
      Details the lives of three women mainly, along with various other characters, living in a small New England town in the late 1930s-early 1940s. It was banned many times over for its sexual content, and while I suspect it was fairly salacious for its time, it's pretty tame now. That doesn't make the story any less interesting or well told, though. I enjoyed how all the characters - well drawn, to a one - interacted and influences each other's lives, and while the book is arguable not high literature, I thought it was a great read.
    • 4/5
      Peyton Place by Grace Metallious is the banned novel which spawned a movie and popular TV series. The writing grabbed me from the very start. Set in a small New England village in 1937 through 1944, the writing is surprisingly good. Not literature, but right up there with the contemporary fiction of its era.Even without the singular notoriety of being a banned book, Peyton Place is a riveting, brilliant and scathing expose of the small-minded, petty, and prejudiced townsfolk. It is a template for the novels and television soap operas that follow in the 1960s and 1970s.It's an extremely gripping and readable debut novel that draws you further and further into the murderous workings of the town. The author's characterizations of the individual townspeople are very realistic. I found the sexy parts to be tame in this day and age but they were scandalous back in 1956.Once or twice the book veered into sensationalism and some of the descriptive non-narrative passages were a bit over-written in my opinion. Overall, I'm so glad I read this book and would highly recommend it to others if for nothing more than a slice of 1950s sociology.Note: in my edition the preface contained spoilers.
    • 3/5
      From the Book Jacket - When it first appeared in 1956, Grace Metalious’s [debut novel] unbuttoned the straitlaced New England of the popular imagination, transformed the publishing industry, an made its young author one of the most talked-about people in America. [The novel] – which topped the best-seller lists for more than a year and spawned a feature film and long-running television series – reveals the intricate social anatomy of a small New England town. My ReactionsWhile I can certainly see that the inclusion of domestic abuse, incest, abortion, teen sex, etc would be shocking and titillating to a mid-1950s readership, I kept wondering “What’s all the fuss about?”.Many of the characters were too simply drawn to be effective. I did like what Metalious was trying to show – the strength and growing independence of three women in a culture / town that tried to restrict them. I’m not sure she was entirely successful in this endeavor, however. Still, the story line did continue to pull me along, and overall I was entertained.
    • 3/5
      A scandalous book laying bare life in a small town. Metalious creates a living and breathing town populated by real characters and she expertly shows the driving force gossip and with it power have in small town life. Though not as shocking as when it was first published at least in terms of content, what Peyton Place does maintain is true portrayal of a closeted small town life and how beneath the veneer of acceptability there always lurks a dark underbelly.
    • 4/5
      I saw the movie "Peyton Place" a few years back and enjoyed it, so I thought I read the novel by Grace Metalious too. I liked the novel, but not as much as the movie (possibly because I remembered enough of the plot that I knew what was going to happen.)The book, controversial when it was published in the 1950's, is all about small town life in New England, where nosy neighbors are into everyone's business. It's details may have been sordid when it was first published, but in an age when housewives are reading "Fifty Shades of Gray" there isn't really anything shocking in it now a days. Still, the book is interesting from a historical perspective and for its very accurate portrayal of the gossipy atmosphere of small town life.
    • 2/5
      I've read this book twice, once in high school and again for f2f book club in February 2008. It was published in 1956. The setting is 1920 to 1940 in a New England Town. I was not happy to read this book. I enjoyed it better in high school. Too many bad things happened with no one theme. Too many characters with little character development. I don't believe it was very believable though it touched on some very real social concerns.

      "Most surprising book on the best seller list (1956) was Peyton Place by Grace Metalious." David Halberstam from The Fifties.

      The book became the third best selling hardcover novel of the year. "If there ever was a book that reflected the changing nature of American book business as it changed to the new high powered world of paperbacks."

      "...culture detectives teaching the evolution of the feminist movement could find in her pages the emergence of independent woman...."
    • 2/5
      This is a trashy book which did not impress me.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 5/5
      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 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!
    • 4/5
      Yes, really! I was amazed to recently learn that this book was not intended by the author as the sleazy potboiler that the conventional wisdom has it to be. It was cast that way upon its publication in 1956 by those who resented the aspersions the book cast on '50s conformity by suggesting that rape, incest, and domestic abuse — things that "didn't happen" in pristine New England villages — actually did exist. The book is about sex, but it's not sleazy. The characters are well-developed and you'll come to care about them deeply. Be SURE you get the edition pictured here, as its terrific introduction by Ardis Cameron puts the book in perspective culturally.