Grace Metalious is the author best known for Peyton Place (one of the best-selling books in publishing history) and Return to Peyton Place. Her third novel, The Tight White Collar, is filled with the passions and prejudices of another small New England town, Coopers Station. It's as racy as promised, bursting with smug hypocrisy, but also timeless and surprisingly well written.
Anthony Cooper returns to the town his grandfather founded, a writer at loose ends. As with each character, we learn about his family history and present struggles. Doris Palmer is the town busybody and prude with the present petition to town council to keep Christopher Pappas from teaching in the school - for fear his wife Lisa has found out about her own sordid past. These are a few of a myriad of characters in the town - everyone has seamy secrets they want to keep quiet, everyone has a secret love - they intersect, have affairs, cover past sins with righteousness, or deal with it in silence. There are several unwed mothers, abandoned children, adulterous pregnancies and abortions. David Strong is the town music teacher who is queer - though he can't face it yet, Margery's daughter is a Mongolian idiot living in a home; storylines that must have been unusual in 1960. I thought it held up today.
Although each character had grandparents, parents and children, she did an impressive job of structure, with one storyline flowing seamlessly into another. Everyone had the right amount of coverage, and no one was disrespected. Metalious does a good job of portraying pettiness and small town bigotry. Perhaps it is too similar to Peyton Place (which I have yet to read) but I found it solid and entertaining. The controversial Peyton Place was published in 1956, Return to Peyton Place in 1959. Metalious published one other book in 1963, No Adam in Eden. She died the next year at age 39 from symptoms of alcoholism.
1960 / Paperback / 318 pages
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