Peyton Place (1956) - Grace Metalious

Written by Grace Metalious
Read by Tim O’Connor
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
Release date: 11-10-04
Publisher: Books on Tape

Ardis Cameron – Introduction (posted at the end of the recording)

In 1956, when this novel was first published, communities all over New England snapped up copies to see if they were the town portrayed in the book.

Peyton Place is the story of a repressive New England town known for its high standards of public morality, and the steamy sexual activities that take place behind its bedroom doors. While the town’s rigid mores lead to hypocrisy and repression, the earthy characters have an unbelievably high level of sexual functioning, especially the playboy Rodney Harrington and the profoundly round-heeled Betty Anderson. In this environment, Allison McKenzie, a dreamy girl coming to womanhood, must make her way without a father, living with her frigid mother, Constance McKenzie.

©1956 Grace Metalious (P)2001 Books on Tape, Inc.

“Metalious was a competent writer with some flair whose punchy workmanlike prose efficiently captured her little inland New England hamlet’s earthy (if somewhat unbelievably sexually functional) populace.” (Kirkus Reviews)

Three women are forced to come to terms with their identity, both as women and as sexual beings, in a small, conservative, gossipy New England town, with recurring themes of hypocrisy, social inequities and class privilege in a tale that includes incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder. It sold 60,000 copies within the first ten days of its release and remained on the New York Times best seller list for 59 weeks. The novel spawned a franchise that would eventually run through four decades. Twentieth Century-Fox adapted it as a major motion picture in 1957, and Metalious wrote a follow-up novel that was published in 1959, called Return to Peyton Place, which was also filmed in 1961 using the same title. The original 1956 novel was adapted again in 1964, in what became a wildly successful prime time television series for 20th Century Fox Television that ran until 1969

A review..
I felt like a ‘nosy neighbor’ (of Peyton Place) reading this book. It’s not a gripping page turner, for me it was a book to be savored (it took me a month to read it!) I was very involved with each of the main characters’ lives and goings on and that’s just what this book is. We observe the lives of a cast of characters of a small New England town (Peyton Place) There are MANY very serious issues that are dealt with in this book - rape, unwed pregnancies, yet it is never written in a sordid fashion. In addition, the character development is outstanding.

I mentioned the writing — exquisite — I was captivated from the first sentence “Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.” Having been born and raised in New England, I remember exactly what Indian summers were like.

Peyton Place immediately brings to mind steamy scenes of illicit passion in a coastal Maine village: the ultimate soap opera of the 1950s. Metalious’s original novel, however, presents a clear and insightful look at family relationships, personal growth and failures, and coming of age in a New Hampshire town. Tim O’Connor’s detached but affectionate interpretation brings to mind Our Town or It’s a Wonderful Life. O’Connor doesn’t perform a production as much as tell a story, with gentleness and compassion. His scholarly reading of editor Ardis Cameron’s commentary on the last track fits the book perfectly, bringing historical perspective to the hysteria surrounding the book’s publication. Extensive interludes of music from the period separate the book’s major sections, completing the production perfectly. R.P.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2002,

This book is divided into three books. Each book begins and ends with music and is individually numbered. I have divided it as such. There are 97 chapters I had to download individually and hope they are all in the right order…..J