 "House
Party"
by Dominique Napier
Beacon, 1961
The back cover reads: "They were sorry in
the morning...
Betsy was about to give in...
...to that moment of passion every woman needs. But could she find
it during this wild-drinking, wild-sexing weekend house party? Would--
Joe Paradise...
...her husband's boss, take enough time off from cheating with other
lovely guests to pave Betsy's way to Eden? Or could--
Milly Paradise...
...Joe's wife, show the way through overexposed sexcapades with an
ambisextrous lover? Or might--
Tom Fanning...
...Betsy's own husband, through his weekend affair with lovely Erin,
send Betsy into the arms of--
Ed Barnes...
...and the ecstasy Tom had always denied her?
The story of a free-loving weekend--answering a question deeper than
morality!"
By the beginning of the 1960's, the paperback
was starting the lose it's appeal. Risqué foreign films were the
place to go if you wanted lurid entertainment. Rock and roll and television
were cutting into the reading sexual revolution just around the corner
most people's puritanical attitudes toward sex were fading away. In a nutshell,
the tawdry paperback had hit the skids. What was to come was the next step
in the evolution of the paperback—"Sleaze" where the sex and violence was
more graphic. Whereas the painted covers of the 1950's paperback promised
much and gave little, the gaudy covers of the later 60's paperback was
only the tip of the iceberg for the page-turning orgy that wait inside.
House Party is an example of
the transition between your classic tawdry paperback and the word of sleaze
that lie ahead. Our lovely heroine, Betsy is blissfully unaware she is
trapped in a passionless suburban marriage until one fateful weekend when
her husband and her meet up with dozens of other couples at their bosses
vacation cabin/mansion for a summer party. Over the course of one night,
she becomes the unnoticed witness to several infidelities. At first this
repulses her…but (as is always the case) soon excites her. That is until
one of the infidelities she stumbles upon is that of her own drunken husband.
That, of course, throws her into the arms of an old flame that just happened
to get an invitation to this shindig.
House Party starts by treating
sex with kid gloves (so-to-speak) as was standard in the 1950’s. But by
then end of the novel, the book takes a decidedly “sleaze” turn with everyone
shacking up with everyone else including a gay scene thrown in at the end
that brings the book to a violent conclusion.
Paperbacks like this show that after the 1950’s
there was no turning back from the “innocent” era of the classic tawdry
paperback.
(By the way, is it just me or does the woman
on the cover look a lot like Diana Dors?)
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