Sordid, scandalous filth. That’s what they said about Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place when it was published in the fall of 1956. Some book stores refused to sell it. Some libraries banned it. And yet it sold so many copies that it was number one on the New York Times best sellers list for 59 straight weeks.

Since I’m currently writing a book that takes place in the late 1950s, I decided to pick up the novel to help me get a feel for what people were talking about during that time period.

Though the book was published in 1956, it takes place in the late 1930s and into World War II. So much for research. But I like smut as much as the next girl, so I plunged ahead, interested to see how “dirty” a book had to be to get all those 1950s Americans in an uproar.

Well, after 372 pages of abortions, rapes, incest, murder, a suicide and a mother who gives enemas to her teenage son, I can see why people snuck the book into their house.

The book takes place in the small New Hampshire town of Peyton Place. There are a ton of characters in the book (too many!) but the main focus is on three women. Constance MacKenzie, who returns to Peyton Place a widow after having lived in New York City; Constance’s illegitimate daughter Alison (yes, Constance was screwing a married man in New York, got pregnant, had his baby and lived off the man until he died); and Selena Cross, a pretty girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who is raped by her step-father (Metalious’ first version had it as Selena’s father but the publishers made her change it) gets pregnant and has an abortion.

There are a lot of story lines, a lot of switches of point of view that can be, if not exactly jarring can leave you at least a bit woozy. I mean do we really need to know about Reverend Fitzgerald, who left his Catholic faith to become a Protestant minister and lives every day with silent regret and terror. Grace, we get it – everyone has a secret.

And that is one of the big themes of Peyton Place. Secrets. Everyone in a small town thinks they know everyone else’s story but they don’t because everyone has a secret - usually so dark and awful that they’ll hold on to forever if they’re allowed – but events conspire and they seldom are allowed to keep them guarded.

The biggest secret, of course, is sex. Sex rules Peyton Place and its reign continues over the successive generation: Constance is wound up about her own sexual history; her 12-year-old daughter Alison (13 really, Constance had to deduct a year to make her story jibe) dreams of being a writer and, as the story progresses, sex; Lucas Cross dominates his step-daughter Selena; and then there’s Evelyn Page, so perverse in her love for her son that she cripples him emotionally. The only character that seems to see sex clearly is the newcomer to Peyton Place, Tom Makris. He believe sex is good and healthy and that young people should be allowed to act on their sexual urges…but then he rapes Constance midway through the book so who cares what he thinks!?

There are other politically incorrect bits in this book that definitely date it to the 50’s. There are slurs against Jews, Greeks and I couldn’t even count how many times the “n” word was bandied about. Not that any black people currently live in Peyton Place. But it was founded by a black man - a fact that greatly shames this town.

It’s hard to know how to view a book when you weren’t alive during the time it came out and caused an uproar. Of course, we all have heard that the 1950s were supposed to be a time of conservatism so viewing it with that thought in mind it does seem pretty daring. I shudder to think what they’re write about us 50 years from now.

Is it still relevant today? Obviously, there’s not much taboo when it comes to having illegitimate kids, and most American women aren’t sexually repressed, so most women aren’t going to be freed by reading this book. But as a soap opera it’s pretty engaging, and it will give you a glimpse of a different era, so for those reasons I’d say it’s worth a read.

End note: Whatever you do, don’t watch the movie and think you’ve read the book. I happened to catch the movie a few days after finishing the book and boy did Universal do a good job of sanitizing the town. People that die in the book don’t die in the film, people that get abortions in the book conveniently fall down and miscarry in the movie or never get pregnant to begin with, boys that never get out from under their mother’s thumb in the book take flight in the movie. Also, a great read is a March 2006 Vanity Fair article on the author Grace Metalious. She died of alcoholism at the age of 40. Not exactly a feel good story herself.

Related topics: 1950s, Banned Books, books, Grace Metalious, New York Times Best Seller, Peyton Place