"Peyton Place" by Grace Metalious

Peyton Place was the 'Desperate Housewives' of its day. India Knight's introduction tells me that it sold 60,000 copies in its first ten days; the TV series had an audience of 60 million. It scandalised America.

I found it almost unreadable. Even allowing for the fact that the sexual mores seem desperately outdated, I found it really badly written. Most novelists know the detailed back story of each or their characters and, using hints, make the reader interested in the characters whilst wanting to read more to understand the mysteries that the author has not yet set out in full. Metalious  introduces you to each of the characters in turn by explaining their back story. In full. Perhaps on the theory that in a small town there are no secrets. Except that her thesis is that Peyton Place is a small town run on the secrets that everybody hides or at least tries to hide from everyone else. There are a lot of characters. By page 100 I was bored. And the focus was on this silly spoilt little girl who was growing up.

The pace varies widely. Sometimes the book jumps a couple of years. Some critical episodes are described in a few pages; trivia is given as much space. Allison and Norman go on a picnic and discuss which sandwiches they prefer which has absolutely no bearing on either plot or character development; this just wastes words.

Characters don't really develop. Like robots in a Greek tragedy they follow their predestined dooms, wearing masks, except that they don't even discover their fatal flaws because every aspect of their personalities has been laid bare by Metalious. She doesn't believe in 'show, don't tell'. She explains everything.

The very worst bit is where Tom explains his view of sexuality to Constance. This is like an essay entitled 'what I have learned from the Kinsey report'. It should have a box around it and the words 'author's message' in bold above.

Yes, shocking things happen. But I did not care enough about any of the characters to really care. In any case, the wicked eventually got their just deserts and the good triumphed. This book is more like an extended morality play than a novel.

A dreadful potboiler. April 2012; 475 pages