Of course since this is the 60s the women don’t actually call themselves lesbians, they actually mock the word and those people. One of the most interesting things about Jennifer was her past when she was in a lesbian relationship with a girl named Maria. But Jennifer wants more from her life and wants to be recognized as more than her body, she wants to find a husband who loves her for her, she wants children. She’s known by the press and by men (and women) only for her body which she uses to her advantage and which she’s obsessed with keeping young. Jennifer lies about her age in hopes of making it big so that she can make money to send to her mother. She was the only likable character in the book really, and even she did some questionable/unlikable things. Jennifer was by far my favourite character in the novel (I thought it was Anne but with that ending there’s no way!). I think the only way I can accurately review the book is to focus on the three women who make up the novel: I wasn’t a fan of the amount of sexual slurs that were used in the novel, but once again it was written in the late 60s and times were different then. The novel is explicit in sex (both straight and gay), drug and alcohol abuse, celebrity status, abortion, and the fickleness of fame. Valley of the Dolls focuses on the dark monotony of fame. Heck, I can see how some parts of the novel would still be “scandalous” to some readers today!

Once I changed the way I read the book, I could understand how the book was scandalous for it’s time, even with it’s corny sex scenes.

I mean here I was reading this supposedly “scandalous” book for it’s time when I didn’t understand how any of the first few sex scenes could be labelled scandalous, I mean they were nothing compared to Fifty Shades! But that was my problem, I was looking at the book from a modern perspective not from a perspective of a person reading this book in the 1960s.

I’ll admit it, when I first started this book I laughed.

These three women become best friends when they are young and struggling in New York City and then climb to the top of the entertainment industry-only to find that there is no place left to go but down-into the Valley of the Dolls. Genre(s): Fiction, Classics, Romance, Adult, Dramaĭolls: red or black capsules or tablets washed down with vodka or swallowed straight-for Anne, Neely, and Jennifer, it doesn’t matter, as long as the pill bottle is within easy reach. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann Review

Valley of the dolls paperback