Once Is Not Enough is not nearly as bad as Jacqueline Susann’s prior two bestsellers, thank goodness.
Once is about the spoiled daughter of a famous producer, Mike Wayne. Mike ships January off to boarding school at age 7 after his wife kills herself trying to abort their second child.
January has no real friends at school, has no idea of what families are. She idolizes her father, whom she sees sometimes on weekends in New York.
Graduated at 17, she wants to go work with Mike. He’s busy so he sends her to enjoy herself with an actor several years older.
Franco takes her on a wild motorcycle ride.
January is thrown off, hitting a wall. She spends three years learning to walk again.
That’s about all January ever learns.
All the people around her are immature, self-centered, greedy for money and power.
January’s fate is predictable.
Once Is Not Enough is a forgettable novel, though technically far better than Susann’s earlier bestsellers, Valley of the Dolls and Love Machine.
In Once, Susann draws her plot out of the personalities of her characters, but none of the characters in is someone you’d want to know: They carry too much drama around with them.
Once Is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann
William Morrow, © 1973. 467 p.
1973 bestseller #4. My grade: B-
© 2018 Linda Gorton Aragoni
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