Review: Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

Well before Fifty Shades of Grey, and even the novels of Jackie Collins, was this steamy, controversial and ultimately, trashy, novel that topped the bestseller lists back in the 1960s. Written by an entertainment industry insider, this page turner tells the story of three very different women and their rise and fall, just as the American entertainment industry is experiencing is greatest change, the advent of television.

Anne is the nice girl next door, a moderately wealthy young woman from Boston who aspires to be something better than a wife and mother, the role that everyone assumes will be hers from the time she is born. She shocks everyone by leaving for New York and working first as a secretary and then as a model. She experiences a string of high profile relationships, however, her ultimate downfall is her infatuation with the charismatic and caddish Lyon. Neely is an impulsive young woman with nerves of steel (at least some of the time,) who is determined to do whatever it takes to rise to the top, and finds herself rising and falling numerous times, and betraying everyone that she cares about along the way. Finally, there is Jennifer, a woman whose desire for security and fame often leave her desperate.

There is no denying one truth. This book is trash. Pure trash. Certainly it's entertaining trash--imagine, hee-hee, if the beautiful and wealthy people of this world really did live like the characters in this book--but after a while the melodrama, lack of nuance and characters (particularly men,) who can change their personalities at the drop of a hat becomes quite wearing. Then again, only the most humourless of readers wouldn't be amused by Neely's antics, the sheer number of bad relationship choices that Jennifer makes and the fact that Anne, a supposedly independent woman, continues to lust over a man whose love is, at best, a fleeting and self serving thing. From a historical perspective, the position of the women being subservient to men whether they be their lovers or their employers rings surprisingly true--there was no such thing as feminism in the 1940s and its little wonder that as they age, the characters know that they are losing what little power they have in this man's world, hence their eventual descent into the valley of the dolls. (Dolls being, of course, the slang term for various drugs taken by people in the entertainment industry during that era.) 

In some ways, Valley of the Dolls reads like a pop culture and romanticised version of The Great Gatsby, written from a female perspective. In another way, to say that means that I'm looking for a level of depth that just doesn't exist within its pages. As I said, it's trash. Pure, escapist trash.   

Recommended? You decide.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more

Who Else Writes Like V.C. Andrews?

Image
Are there any other authors out there who write similar novels to V.C. Andrews? This is a question I see asked frequently in excellent fan run V.C. Andrews Facebook groups like Attic Secrets and The Dolls Club. In times gone by, The Complete V.C. Andrews webpage (which is no more, but the best bits are archived by Lorraine at the Attic Secrets blog,) had a comprehensive list. Today, I thought I would put forward a few of my own thoughts and recommendations. (Note: This will focus mainly on the series and novels written by the actual V.C. Andrews and not ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman, who has a distinctive writing style of his own.) The Classics This is probably the best place to start, as it is likely that some of these novels influenced V.C. Andrews herself. Andrews was a fan of Charles Dickens, mentioning the author in the prologue of her most famous novel Flowers in the Attic. I have yet to read all of Dickens novels (I've read about half,) but I can feel a slight V.C. Andrews vi
Read more