THE TIGHT WHITE COLLAR

by Grace Metalious ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 1960

A narrative gift and a sense of pace provide the sum total of Grace Metalious' contribution in this repeat performance of Peyton Place. Only this time, she has not thought it necessary to hew to a central theme. Each one of the myriad plots seems of equal importance- or, for this reader, unimportance. Once again, she has depicted a small, tight-knit and snobbish northern New England community. Once again the surface pattern is disrupted when fears and passions come to a boiling point. Once again there seem to be almost no characters who haven't something murky in the past- or present- to hide. Most of the secret sins have to do with sex -- normal, extra-marital, perverted, as the case may be. The Coopers, first citizens of Cooper's Mills, are represented by Nathaniel, third generation in the factories, his nephew Anthony, who writes popular novels, lusts for the ladies of easy virtue, and drinks to find surcease for tensions, and Nathaniel's gently reared Southern wife, Margery, who has born him a Mongolian idiot child- and for ten years tries to compensate for her failure as she sees it. And Anthony has his summer ""fun"" with the restless, dissatisfied Lisa Pappas, whose husband is hoping to hold the town to the contract of his teaching in the High School. But Doris Palmer was afraid Lisa guessed something of her well-buried past- and Doris had money and power and drive-and played on people's weakness- and got the Pappas out of town, by slander and suggestion and not too well-veiled blackmail. Even David, who taught music at the High School was afraid of Doris, and her suspicion that he was a queer. So he signed her petition -- and illed himself. In final analysis, everyone got rewards and punishments meted out in due measure -- but the reader has had to wade through a lot of clinically particularized sex to each the last page....The market? Probably a fair measure of the first book, but with ar less excuse.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1960

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Messner

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1960

Categories: FICTION