Valley of the Dolls in The Complete Idiots Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Aug 30, 2011 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, novels, contemporary, chick-lit, popular-fiction, ultimate-reading-list

James T. Kirk: You'll find it in all the literature of the period.

Spock: For example?

James T. Kirk: Oh, the neglected works of Jacqueline Susann, the novels of Harold Robbins....

Spock: Ah... The giants.

--Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Actually, although I blush a bit to admit it, I really relished reading Valley of the Dolls--which I basically gobbled down in one sitting--all 400 odd pages. Trash it may be, it's good trash--a compulsively readable, sometimes cheesy soap opera. With admittedly eye- James T. Kirk: You'll find it in all the literature of the period.

Spock: For example?

James T. Kirk: Oh, the neglected works of Jacqueline Susann, the novels of Harold Robbins....

Spock: Ah... The giants.

--Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Actually, although I blush a bit to admit it, I really relished reading Valley of the Dolls--which I basically gobbled down in one sitting--all 400 odd pages. Trash it may be, it's good trash--a compulsively readable, sometimes cheesy soap opera. With admittedly eye-rolling moments. And a voyeuristic vibe since you get the feeling characters are based on real people such as Ethel Merman, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. A blurb inside the cover from The Village Voice calls it "proto-feminist" and I can see that, even if more in a cautionary tale than girl power sense. This is set in the age of Mad Men, in New York City from September of 1945 to January of 1965 and was published in 1966.

The "dolls" of the title are pills. The red Seconals, the yellow Nembutals, the "little green" Dexedrines and unnamed blues and blue-striped. It's the women, too--ambitious, beautiful, and hollowed out. The central character is Anne Welles. She comes to New York City straight out of Radcliffe determined to leave her small town New England roots behind and resists being subsumed by rich men demanding she give up her dreams for a career--only to find that the man she does want feels "castrated" by her success. Then there are her friends and roommates who are destined for success in show business. Neely O'Hara is only seventeen when she gets her first break on Broadway, and by the time she's twenty she'll be taking a rainbow of pills to keep her slim, keep her up and bring her down. Jennifer North, in her mid-twenties when the book begins, lives and dies by her face and figure.

This is by no means a happy tale and quite cynical really. But Jacqueline Susann and her husband were both involved in show business, and many of the details in her portrait of it rings true enough. The book seems quite risque for its time; there are homosexual affairs, infidelities, mental illnesses, suicides, abortions, plastic surgeries and more. There's also a lot of the picture of life in post-World War II New York City that interested me--such as the near impossibility of finding a good apartment and how that little box called television changed the rules. The picture of a sanitarium in the book was particularly scary and surreal. And yes, I did care about these characters. So, even if I do find it hard to picture this book being read 250 years from now, no Susann doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the likes of Harold Robbins.

Although, you know which Susann book I out and out adored when I was really young? Every Night, Jossephine! Her non-fiction book about her and her poodle. Yes, really. ...more

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