Peyton Place

By: Grace Metalious

Narrated by: Tim O'Connor

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.

Astoundingly beautiful!

This is a must read! I could not put it down, beautifully written and composed. The narration was perfectly on point.

Quality Writing

Candid tale of a small town. Real. I like the happy ending, if a person considered it happy.

fun4gracie

Listened to this book twice so far and probably will again. It is truly the best book I've listened to in 4 years. This was the #1 best seller in the 20 th century and after listening to it you will agree. Just terrific.

Wow, this book is about more than I thought it was

What a great book! I had no idea. Had it not been trashed by the terrible soap opera that used its title, I’d have read it long ago, and been the better for it. This book isn't about sex at all, though it includes it as part of the narrative, it's about class and gender. It's beautifully written, despite the rape scene that was included on the insistence of the publishers, who thought it would sell more books.Grace Metalious was too real and fresh to realize how a sexually repressed nation would pounce on the sexuality of the characters and fail to realize what else was going on in the book. Women had ownership of their lives and actions. Wow! Still a good and worthwhile read after 50+ years.
The narrator was perfect. He got out of the way and let the words and characters speak. I looked for other books he'd narrated on audible, nada. Damn. He's good.

Better than expected.

Better than I expected and I waited too long to listen to this. Especially enjoyed the history behind the book at the end.