Looking for Peyton Place: A Novel

I have just finished another great book by Barbara Delinsky. She never fails to educate me about something in a thoroughly enjoyable novel. This time it was Grace Metalious and mercury poisoning.

The story is about an author who is haunted by the stigma she felt from her small New England town and the haunting influence of the author of Peyton Place. In an effort to find out why her mother died she goes back to the town she grew up in to finds answers. What she also finds is love, family, a home and peace of mind.

As usual I love Barbara's plot, characters, the building of relationships and what I learned.

I LOVE Barbara Delinsky, but I think this had to be her worst ever. Coast Road, Lake News, The Vineyard, The Summer I Dared....they're all fabulous but this one I couldn't even finish.

My rule with books is that if I don't like it by page 100 or don't understand what's going on by then, put it down.

Well, I tried past 100 and went to 200 and still didn't like it. I didn't understand the point or the characters. There were so many characters and she got so absorbed in describing the characters *who were all townspeople anyway* that I just got lost (and bored).

So if you have the patience to continue on with this book, more power to you.

If I like a book, I read it fast. If I don't, it takes forever and this one would have taken forever.

Sorry, Barbara, this one wasn't you.

I'm a big fan of both Peyton Place and Grace Metalious. I even tracked down copies of her (now out of print) books No Adam in Eden, and The Tight White Collar. When I read the amazon summary of Looking for Peyton Place I was very interested. I'd never read any Barbara Delinsky before, but thought I'd give her a chance.

I found the writing to be very poor, there are numerous typos in the book. I could forgive Delinsky for using google as a verb once, but then it popped up a few more times along with the use of Blackberried as a verb. Also, she frequently uses "ohmigod" in the book. If I wanted to read internet shorthand language I would go online, not pick up a book. I found her use of these words distracting, not to mention the awfulness of a character whispering something so cliche as "don't want it, but will die if we stop" into someone else's ear in the middle of sex.

The plot's not very original either. You could easily watch Eric Brokovich and get the same thing.

In the author's note on her website Delinsky says "Of the many books I've written, I've never received as much immediate interest from any title as I have from this one. Mention LOOKING FOR PEYTON PLACE to people, and eyes light, brows raise, smiles form."

She also said that you don't have to be familiar with Peyton Place to enjoy the book, but she added clever little references in the book if you were familiar with it. Some of these references include name a character the last name of Farrow because Mia Farrow was in the tv soap, or naming streets and characters after people and places in Peyton Place. I thought they weren't very clever at all.

The legacy of Grace Metalious and Peyton Place aren't honored in this book. They're simply used as a gimmick. The name of Peyton Place still stirs interest in people, and I think Delinsky exploited that fact to help sell an extremely mediocre book.

When I use to read BD novels I really felt like she understood people. This latest book is out churned formula writing about a long gone alcoholic viewed through the eyes of a snobby self important writer and her misery at returning home. The switch of view points from first person to third was annoying and I found it hard to like / understand any of the characters. Save yourself the money and skip this total waste of time.

Very seldom do I give up on a book; I gave up on this one after several attempts to finish. I have read Barbara Delinsky in the past and have enjoyed her books. I remember the fascination with the Peyton Place/Grace Metalious hoopla in the 50's and 60's so I was expecting to enjoy this story. It is dull and tiresome.

Bottom line is that I am impressed enough with this writer that I will search out and try another of her books, but this story was a stinker. The whole analogy to Peyton Place was groundless and overdone. The townspeople distrust Annie for no reason except that she was a fan of Grace Metalious when she was growing up. The author could have come up with better. She's back to look into her mother's death from a fall due to poor balance. Out of thin air, Annie decides it's not really Parkinson's that her mother had, but mercury poisoning, and that it must be the mill that's at fault. What's more, characters undergo sudden revelations and transformations that are not organic to the novel. In a Hallmark feel-good sort of way her sister and brother-in-law and all the town and the mill's employees suddenly join her in fighting the mill. I'm hoping other books by this author will be better.

As usual, Barbara Delinsky has provided me with an outstanding summer read! Looking for Peyton Place is not just a mindless romance story. It involves little known facts about mercury poisoning, chelation, and the original Peyton Place author, Grace Metalious. I have enjoyed all of her books so much, and this one was not a disappointment. This is an excellent choice for travelers who spend time in airports as well as beach bums.

Delinsky's writing style unfailingly provides immediate, engrossing reading. This unique novel continued that legacy. The first paragraphs of the prologue warmed me into the book, and I looked forward to each parenthesis in time during which I'd be able to return to the read.

Before I began reading LOOKING FOR PEYTON PLACE, I was confused about where to place the fulcrum between what appeared to be a balance of autobiography & fiction. A quick check of the title page showed that the book was categorized as fiction. Reading into the prologue, I was able to discriminate how the deceased Grace Metalious was woven through Annie Bank's reality (this novel's fictional character), as opposed to being woven through Barbara Delinsky's reality. Part of the confusion (and the appeal) had to do with Delinsky's photo on the hardcover book jacket relating uncannily to the one of Grace, and to the artistic representation of Annie.

The reality Vs. fiction questions played out as a unique type of intrigue, which continued percolating even after I had settled into accepting the story as fiction. I couldn't help speculating how Annie's feelings and actions might have been lifted from Barbara's younger life/career, and blended into her current seasoning as an author. Contemplating Annie and Barbara's similarities and differences added to the story's charisma. I, and probably many other readers, was also mesmerized by a First Person Narrative of a writer dramatizing how she thinks through, and goes about writing a book.

Throughout this plot, Annie was repeatedly asked (in essence), "Are you going to write our shames and shambles into a book?" The interjections of that question, posed in various words and ways, continued to feed my curiosity about "would she" ... or, "did she" write that book (in this one). I imagine that this draw of curiosity was Delinsky's intent, which, in my case, worked.

Parallel situations from my life to Annie's also worked to enhance my enjoyment of this exquisitely designed plot and writing style, which was subtly and sensually different from any of Delinsky's other novels. Yet, initially (my reason for avoiding reading this novel sooner) I was put off by the environmental ploy of mercury poisoning of local residents by a small town mill. My life has run a course on a somewhat reverse-flip of good/evil of Delinsky's redeemed Norman Rockwell photo of small town life in Middle River, presented as a parallel to "Peyton Place," as the 50's novel was re-vamped, modernized, and cleaned up in Delinsky's "upgrade."

My husband has worked his lifetime in coal mines. We are loyal friends of industry, and have been blessed to be repeatedly employed by what we see as heroic "good guys" in charge of and in ownership of the several mines at which Tom has worked. It was very rare that anyone we knew came anywhere near the type of villainy dramatized through Sandy and Aidan Meade; most of our cohorts in the industry were of the James Meade character type.

As I continued into the story, with the welcome background of having reviewed many previous Delinsky novels, I was hoping for this one to have applied this author's honed talent of accurately separating good from evil, in the currently slimed (by media and terrorism) industrial arenas of milling and mining. Delinsky accomplished more than I would have thought possible, given our pervasive cultural climate of anti-capitalism, anti-industry; she successfully exposed how easy it can be to hurriedly mark something as evil, then blindly bully through a lumped-together package, with no motivation or effort to discriminate nuances, to accurately focus boarders between light and dark, value and corruption.

What held my reading most strongly, though, was the easy flowing, colloquial-narrative-style, enhanced by the bright duality of "voice" of Grace Metalious communicating with Annie from "beyond the grave."

This novel was a courageous evolution of not only Barbara Delinsky's writing talent and natural psychological wisdom; it was a courageous exposure of what appeared to be Barbara's (as well as Annie's) personal foibles given with endearing self-awareness of personality flaws and sparks.

I'm speculating that LOOKING FOR PEYTON PLACE may be too solid of a literary offering to be recognized widely and immediately for its subtle glamor in nuance of worth. This is a slow-simmer winner. Some of the rest of Delinsky's fine repertoire might fade slightly over millenniums of time. This one, though, could slide through each barrier between alternate ages and endure, mostly because it's a warm, unadulterated look into the mind of a healthy author (Barbara Delinsky), accompanied by the tortured but redeemed soul of yet another author (Grace Metalious) who was ahead of her time and fell into sorrow and separation instead of rising with her contribution to literary annals.

I'm almost chilled with an enormous sense of loss, when I think that this novel might not have been written or published exactly as is. Prior to reading this novel, I wouldn't have believed I could enjoy it as I did, and come away healed in the areas the story addressed. Whatever a reader's reservations are about being enthusiastically entertained by this novel, he should set them aside and dive in.

Yet, I'm haunted by the awareness that in reality and with real people it's not this easy (and it wasn't easy at all in the novel!) to separate good from evil in business and industry (or anywhere). It's too commonly automatic to allow anger, spite, and past wounds to run the shows and pursuits in life, as I believe is too often the case with environmental terrorism, possibly any type of terrorism, and with many causes which become so heated by pseudo self-righteousness, and compulsions to act as avenging (dark) angels, that evil begets evil, in the name of good. The result is that innocent, hard working people suffer most from the heart-wrenching rabble left from rousers (especially from those who've made a career of rousing).

In the case of my small town history based on the coal mining industry, our current plight (blight) swirls around a few wealthy new-settlers who retired to our area, combined with (or agitated by) career activists who are not from our area, who do not intend to reside there, yet who desire to rid our area of an industry which is far cleaner than the activists' motives or methods, driven by seething hatred which they "see" as self-righteous honor (from my vantage point, it's a sick type of "honor" which can be seen clearly only when looking through a glass darkly).

My plea to our species is to please be careful, maybe even compassionate, prior to pushing ways and beliefs onto others, especially when that force desecrates a people's history, along with its means of living and surviving.

Is jumping to conclusions our greatest habitual evil?

Might this be especially so when that (lack of) thought pattern results in acting upon "facts" which are not facts, and implementing destructive means to control life, to the ultimate point of human de-evolution?

In this novel the author has at least attempted to show how important it can be to take time to gain a true perspective cleared of personal vendettas, prior to methodically working to destroy someone else's way of life or economic structure of well-being. Sometimes perspective gained means mad motivation lost.

Delinsky has my appreciation for what she's accomplished and exposed in LOOKING FOR PEYTON PLACE. The exposure of which I'm speaking has nothing to do with Mercury poisoning or similar issues (though the alternative cure was interesting). It has to do with exposing how personal motivations can so easily seat-in to drive causes and cloud issues with a blindly horrifying force for destruction.

With those issues attended, I can conclude in good conscience that this was a moving piece of literature, an engrossing, entertaining read laced with an appealingly unique literary style.

Speaking of literary style, I should note that novels which use First Person Narrative can be too easily flawed by an irritatingly disruptive reading rhythm, when they're laced with interjected segments of Third Person Narrative. This novel accomplishes this difficult type of transition from differing points-of-view much better than most I've read. The narrative style here has light whiffs of similarity to Sue Grafton's "S" is for SILENCE and James A. Michener's THE NOVEL (both of which I've reviewed). My favorite use of narrative style is either an uninterrupted First Person, which has been generally mastered by the detective novel genre as a common choice of narrative. My personal favorite of that style (used without alternate-view-interjections) has been mastered absolutely by Robert B. Parker in his Spenser series.

What Delinsky has done in the First Person segments in this novel has edged beyond mastery, and has exquisitely captured the narrator's personality through her naturally-spiced speech patterns. The result is that Annie Banks' voice and spirit lives through the words of this story.

In an interesting Afterword, the publisher provided a short history of Grace Metalious and PEYTON PLACE, including a summary of that novel's plot, which was helpful to me since I've not read PEYTON PLACE. Each time I've approached the book I've felt overwhelmed by a sense of artful hollowness. Yet, I know that Grace was a rare and highly skilled author of uncanny talent. I know I would drool over the literary luxury in her words. But I'm rarely in the mood to willingly depress myself, which is why I'm thankful to have read Delinsky's book, including the Acknowledgments and Afterword.

I recommend this novel for its reading appeal, as well as its value as an offering of good literature traversing multiple layers, levels, and ages.

Linda Shelnutt

I gave up on this one. Didn't like Annie, an egotistical writer who thought the whole town revolved around her miserable childhood there.
None of the characters held my interest.

This was truly an excellent book in all ways. Great story line, well defined characters. I had a hard time putting it down! Highly recommend it.