Once Is Not Enough

by Jacqueline Susann

Once upon a time, the entertainment industry was a world that never slept. Magazine editors, models, pop stars and all the rest visited “vitamin doctors” to get the shots that would allow them to stay up all night and then work all day—in offices decorated with beanbag chairs and Calderesque mobiles … In this world, January Wayne goes from poor-little-rich-girl to grown-up swinger, as she searches New York and Los Angeles for a guy just like Mike Wayne, the glamorous movie producer who also happens to be her father…

The spectacular bestseller from the author of VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.

Genres: Fiction, Romance, Chick Lit, Classics, Novels, Drama, Contemporary

467 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Jacqueline Susann was one of the most successful writers in the history of American publishing. Her first novel, Valley of the Dolls, published in 1966, is one of the best-selling books of all time. When The Love Machine was published in 1969, it too became an immediate #1 bestseller and held that position for five months. When Once is Not Enough was published in 1973, it also moved to the top of the best-seller list and established Jackie as the first novelist in history to have three consecutive #1 books on The New York Times Best Seller list. She was a superstar, and became America's first brand-name author.

Reviews

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I once asked a writer friend whether he'd ever contemplated setting aside his literary integrity, writing a Jackie Susann novel, and making millions of dollars. He replied, "Don't you think I'd write like Jackie Susann if I could?" The point being: You can't fake this sort of thing. And I think: You can't. Whatever it was that might have occurred during the editorial process, and whatever labors Michael Korda (or whoever) labored to labor, there is an integrity to this novel that sucks you in and keeps you turning pages. It's an addle-brained, childish integrity, but it's integrity nonetheless. The incredibly overdone incestuous fixation of the heroine, the explicit and yet squeamish sex scenes, the tawdry cultural name-dropping: It's mesmerizing. And at the very end, Susann takes a leap into the transcendent, and I'll be goddamned if she doesn't pull it off.

I couldn't possibly have had more fun.

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHEN I WAS HOME ON VACATION FOR A WEEK AND LIVED WITH AN ALCOHOLIC LESBIAN NAMED BLANKET I FOUND THIS BOOK AND IT SAVED MY LIFE. I READ THE STORY OF JANUARY WAYNE IN 1 SITTING - FOR AWHILE AFTER I HAD PEOPLE REFER TO ME AS JANUARY;BECAUSE OF OUR TRAGIC SIMILARITES
IF THERE IS A BOOK THAT SPEAKS OF ME THIS IS IT
I CRIED AND CRIED AND LAUGHED
THEN LEARNED HOW TO LOVE

[Barbara Kacic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is undeniably a trashy book. But holy hell its amazingly well executed trash

[Dfordoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve always loved trash cinema but in the past year I’ve discovered that trash fiction holds just as many delights. And fiction doesn’t get much trashier than Jacqueline Susann. Once is not Enough, published in 1973, was the third of her blockbuster bestsellers.

While it didn’t quite equal the success of Valley of the Dolls (which has sold around 30 million copies and has been claimed to be the biggest selling novel of all time) it did reach Number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Susann didn’t quite invent the literary blockbuster, but she did take the blockbuster formula to new heights. Her critics would have said she took it to new depths, but when you can sell 30 million copies of one novel you can afford not to worry too much about the critics.

Once is not Enough includes the basic ingredients that had made Valley of the Dolls so successful - a show business background, glamour, celebrities, sex, drugs, tragedy and self-destructiveness. And it adds a very large helping of kinkiness.

The heroine this time is January Wayne, the daughter of a big-time Broadway producer who had tried to repeat his success in Hollywood and come badly unstuck. January is fond of her father. Very fond of him. Very very fond of him. And not in the way 20-year-old women are supposed to be fond of their dads. He’s the only man she really wants, but she tries desperately to find someone else as similar to him as possible. And ends up with a 58-year-old alcoholic author who has grown tired of writing books that are admired by the critics but don’t sell and has decided to try his hand at writing bestsellers.

January’s stepmother (the incredibly wealthy Dee Milford) has been trying to line her up with a suitable young man, but unfortunately the suitable young man is having an affair with a middle-aged movie star. And this same middle-aged movie star is having a lesbian affair with Dee Milford! January also develops a rather worrying drug habit.

Every element that could possibly have outraged mainstream literary critics and self-appointed moral guardians of society makes an appearance at some stage in the outlandish soap-opera plot. Susann’s great strength as a writer is that she had absolutely no shame and was completely untroubled by irrelevant concerns such as good taste. She believed in excess, and that excess works best if you have a very large amount of it. Truckloads of it.

Part of the success of Valley of the Dolls was due to the fact that Susann knew the world depicted in the novel extremely well, having been an actress on Broadway in the 50s. With Once is not Enough she moves into a 1970s setting, and she was not quite as familiar with the world of early 70s youth culture. But it doesn’t really matter since her occasional misunderstandings of this world just add to the book’s already enormous camp appeal.

The novel is of course complete trash, but it celebrates its own trashiness. Susann’s great insight into the literary world was that if you’re going to write trash, do it with style and energy and don’t apologise for it. Revel in it. She pushes trashiness so far that it becomes an art form. And like so much trash art, it ends up reflecting more of the truth about the society that produced it than the tedious tomes churned out by Serious Writers who write Literature.

Susann’s novels are also, as Camille Paglia has so rightly pointed out, absolutely essential reading for anyone who wants to understand American popular culture today. Susann was one of the people who created modern popular culture. And her books are fun.

[Susanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ah, the days when alcohol was officially one of the major food groups.

Normally I love these soap-opera sagas. And I would have enjoyed this ride through Doll-land NYC, but continually controlling my gag reflex over the whole father-daughter lust thing got to be a strain.

At least the incest theme in The Love Machine was only hinted at and the character got help. Even the other characters are aware of the incest theme in Once Is Not Enough and yet no one ever points out how sick the father-adult daughter relationship is nor ever recommends they seek professional help. I kept waiting for this to somehow redeem itself....only to be confronted with the one of the all-time Oh You SO Did Not Just End This Book Like That!!! finales.

The book earns an extra star because I want to grab someone and discuss the book over coffee despite the fact it drove me up the wall.

I didn't like it, but it touched my emotions, and any time an author can make you want to rant about fictitious people, they've done their job.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, but it should have been....

Despite its incredibly brilliant title, this book was no Valley of the Dolls. Actually, that's incorrect, it was Valley of the Dolls, and that book only needed to be written once. Or at least, reading that book once was enough for me.

Oh, maybe I just wasn't in the mood this time, I don't know.... It wasn't bad or anything -- I mean, obviously it was bad, but you get what I'm saying. I just wasn't gripped, and if you can't get into this on a flight to Las Vegas, then when, I ask, WHEN can you?!

Still, in the weeks since leaving it in the casino hotel room under a pile of blood-stained Kleenex and empty scotch bottles, I have caught myself wondering what happened to the characters, so I guess I wasn't totally unaffected. I might read this someday, if I'm stuck in an LA rehab or something. Maybe it just wasn't the right time....

[Dennis Holland · Rating 4 out of 5]

An anthropological artifact of the early 1970s disguised as glittery, glorious trash. I read this once before but certainly Susann titled this correctly—once is not enough.

[Jess ❈Harbinger of Blood-Soaked Rainbows❈ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, so a friend of mine at work lent this book to me because she has a friend who actually changed her name to January because of Jacqueline Susann's heroine, January Wayne, who is found in this horribly trashy and scandalous book. Did I like the book? Yes. Did I love the book? No. Did I get anything fascinating or enlightening out of the book? No. This book, to put it simply, entertained me. I'm actually glad that my friend loaned it to me, because I don't think I would have ever had the inclination to read it otherwise. The book, despite its almost 500 pages, took me about a week to read, and without having a plot to absolutely glue my eyes to the book, my working full time, and having somewhat of a life, I can say that a week for me to finish a 500 page book is actually the speed of light.

The book centers on January Wayne, a beautiful but lost and somewhat vacuous socialite, and her middle-aged, washed-up, ex-producer father, with whom she is in love. I say that she is in love, not because the book is filled top to bottom with Electra infused sexual fantasies, but because she cannot possibly conceive that she could love anyone more than she loves her father. At times, she sees him as a sexy and attractive male, rather than her sperm donor, but it isn't, in my opinion, a sexually charged incestual love. January spends three years in a rehabilitation center in Switzerland after a motorcycle accident leaves her incredibly disabled, and she finds herself completely disconnected from the outside world, returning to find that her father, after losing all his fame and money when "his luck ran out," has married an incredibly wealthy woman to give both of them some financial security.

The book from here on out follows January in her quest to please her father, finding love along the way with a man who is the perfect paternal replacement, and discovering the free-love, drug addled, and star-struck New York from the sixties and seventies. She falls in love, she wins, she loses, she finds a job, she comes into money, and even finds herself addicted to speed, in the form of vitamin shots. Every character in Once Is Not Enough is very shallow, except for the mysterious and beautiful Karla, an ex ballerina and actress who seems to bewitch absolutely everyone into falling in love with her (this was a little hard to believe, as I feel there can only be so much perfection that a person can realistically have). Karla does have some depth to her character, as is shown when Susann divulges information about Karla's past during the war. Even January, so naive, becomes a caricature of the innocent girl turned bad. It's like Sandy from Grease, though on a much harder-core scale. There were times that were real, and I could even find myself getting slightly emotional when Tom Colt leaves her right after her father's death. I believe that that is the most real passage in the whole book. Their relationship doesn't reflect on reality, but their breakup does. Maybe that says something in and of itself.

It is a novel which requires basically no intelligent thinking or higher brain power, and does it's job quite well, which is to entertain. Those who are looking for a purely entertainment value read, will certainly like this book, though if you are used to reading Fitzgerald, Orwell, Hemingway, or Salinger, you might want to skip this book. I love a good literary read, but hey, I can get just as wrapped up in Flowers in the Attic too. I think that above all, Once Is Not Enough is a novel about love. Love is fleeting, love changes, love fades. I think the only constant love in this whole book is Mike Wayne's love for January. Even January chooses Tom Colt over her father, but everything Mike does is for his daughter. She is, and always was the one and only person he ever loved in his life. Maybe, that's a lesson to be learned in Once Is Not Enough. The only love that is 100% assured is a parent's love for their child.

[Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just didn't get this book. A girl is obsessed with her dad, so she dates a guy his age. Eventually, she gets so high during an orgy thst she drowns herself?
There was nothing enlightening or heartbreaking about this story. I didn't care about the characters, so I didn't care when they died.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is trash but it’s my trash <3

[Angie Engles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say I am really surprised at how much I like _Once is Not Enough_, flaws and all. For much of my reading life I have heard how "trashy" Jacqueline Susann novels are and (much more concerning) how outdated some of her views. This is not to say that her books are not trashy (they can be) nor that they are the most enlightened when it came to gays and lesbians (they are not), but I do think that with the lesbian subplot (which I knew nothing about going in) that she is rather sympathetic and does not treat the subject as horribly as some of her counterparts most likely would have at the time. (Though by today's standards there is still a lot sorely missing).

Central lead January is the complete opposite of what I would have thought a Jacqueline Susann character to be and the way everything ends gives the reader a lot to think about. To cut a long story short, I have walked away impressed by two main things: this was not the salacious read I had always been told it was and, here and there along the way, I discovered a writer who not only had seemed to 'get' characters who would not sell their soul nor their morals jumping into bed, she also seemed to be celebrating them.

On top of it all, I ended up Kindle Highlighting, something I tend to do when passages really, really speak to me, a lot more than I would have imagined.

[Kerstin · Rating 2 out of 5]

First I must stress that I am not snobbish when it comes to literature. I like bestsellers e g Sydney Sheldon as well as Styron.
This was not my cup of Tea at all. Besides January, the main character, the other characters are cynical and money hungry. I now show buisness is often 80 % buisness and 20% about art but in this book are in relationstips because What they can gain from it.
The first 150 pages is good and then it became boring. Then around page 350 it started being interested again.
I have seen Valley of the dolls and liked It but never read it and thought this would be good but I am disapointed.

[Oliver Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Once is Not Enough’ is, appropriately enough given the groovy 70s vibe that oozes off every page, something of a trip. It’s one of those books that details a series of events happening to a character rather than really having a plot, and often doesn’t fully make sense, but it’s a wild ride when it really lets go. I read it because I wanted to read something from my birth year (1973) and this didn’t disappoint with its tsunami of 70s themes and incidents. There are drug fuelled orgies, cocktail bars and nightclubs, dodgy vitamin shots, experimental theatre groups, and a constant tension between the older male establishment and bright, free thinking youngsters. The shadow of the Second World War (which finished only 28 years before the book was published) looms large over the proceedings and is integral to one of the major story lines. I’ll confess that I found the first half a bit of a slog at times, but when it kicks into gear and the central love triangle (actually more of an octagon) materialises it’s really a fun read. Despite its age it’s probably not for the faint hearted, there are a couple of nasty scenes, and at times it’s unintentionally funny (one characters talks at length about the benefits of semen as a face mask and the books dwells on the disappointingly small manhood of one of the central characters) but all of that adds to the crazy colour of it all.

[Adele Goetz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pardon me for going all Gene Shalit on you, but Once Was More Than Enough! This book had the most annoying ending of any book I have ever read. It felt like Jacqueline Susann got bored of her own ridiculous heroine and just decided to wrap the whole thing up with 20 pages of the most tiresome, after-school special acid trip imaginable. Blech.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um...can we talk about that ending?

Don’t drop acid, kids.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every character in this book needs therapy. And the ones with therapists need better therapists.

[Jackie Lavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly entertaining story of a 1950/1960s beauty who, following a terrible accident that left her isolated from the world during her formative years, becomes a socialite overnight upon her return to society. Every relationship in this book is built on deceit, false gods and money, creating a book that I could only describe as a sparkly dumpster fire.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like The Valley of the Dolls, this is trashy, fun, a product of its time, and really better written than it needs to be in spots. January is the daughter of Mike Wayne, a handsome, powerful, rich movie producer who puts her in an expensive boarding school after her mother's death. She lives for her weekend visits with him in NYC and develops the electra complex of all electra complexes. After graduation she goes with him to Italy, but ends up getting in an accident that disables her for three years as she relearns to walk in an exclusive hospital in Switzerland. When she returns to the states, Mike's lucky movie streak has ended and he has married a rich woman that he doesn't love so that January can have a secure future. As for January, she is a beautiful naive young woman thrown into the free love drug culture of the early 1970s without a safety net. This is a Jacqueline Susann novel, so there is a lot of thinking about sex, talking about sex, and sex. There are also a lot of drugs: sleeping pills, speed ("vitamin shots"), Jack Daniels, acid, pot, and more. Plus a huge subplot involving the tragic WWII experiences of a beautiful, aging Garbo-like Polish actress named Karla! This isn't something that everyone needs to read, but if you want a light and trashy time machine back to 1973, this is your book.

[Marcella · Rating 4 out of 5]

January Wayne is a young and beautiful and possibly the last innocent woman in New York City during the early 70's. The story follows her and those who influence her during her first year back from Europe. As much as January tries to hold on to her moral integrity, those around her have other plans. It's hard to go into details without giving away part of the book. It's a fast read. I found myself not wanting to put it down.

The last 10 pages of this book don't seem to fit with the rest of the story. It's a somewhat strange ending. Let me know if any of you agree.

Overall, if you enjoyed Valley of the Dolls you will love Once Is Not Enough.

[laura_elizabethrd Laura Duran · Rating 5 out of 5]

El libro me encanto, no tiene ninguna enseñanza ningún mensaje mas haya de pos bueno eso...
pero buahh es uno de los libros mas entretenidos que he leído, no puedes despegarte de el, creo recordar que lo devoré en una noche, la historia y el final son una Mierda pero es una MIERDA MARAVILLOSA!!

[Pamela(AllHoney) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another read from my teenage years. I wonder if my mom ever knew what I was reading? LOL! I got most of my books from her but not this one. But I enjoyed it at the time and I have no regrets.

[Maria Lago · Rating 2 out of 5]

Porque tu lo digas, Jacqueline. A mí me bastó.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was trashy and unhinged, but I was entertained for every moment of it

[Lee Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could html a Stefon-from-SNL gif in here I would, but I tried about five times and failed. Because THIS BOOK HAS EVERYTHING.

Motorcycle crashes, lesbians, micro-penis, doctors giving speed injections, Off-Broadway theater with full-frontal nudity, rape as a war crime, nuns (see previous), secret children, sugar cube acid, and I am forgetting half of it. January Wayne, our heroine, has the most intense daddy issues I've ever seen depicted in a work of fiction. Like, creepy daddy issues. Beyond creepy. He was a Broadway and film producer, but his luck ran out, so he married a rich woman. Now January, freshly sprung from a Swiss "Clinique" where she spent years recovering from the aforementioned motorcycle crash, is back in NYC and daddy's life, and trying to determine what she wants out of life. What she wants is a career, and a man just like daddy.

If there is anyone who writes like Jacqueline Susann, I don't know it, because I don't normally read this genre, not since the 80s, when I read some Sidney Sheldon books that belonged to my older sister. All I know is, after reading Moby Dick for all of June, and the 800-page biography of Richard Brautigan all of July, this is precisely the kind of summer trash I wanted and needed. I was agog and devoured every delicious page of it.

Trigger warning: if you are a person in the modern age who isn't used to the very outdated mindset of 1973, don't come at me. This is ageist (50 is considered done), sexist, there are assault scenes that are clearly written to titillate. But if you want some shocking, smutty, mindless fun, nobody does it better.

[Tesa Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susann is another one of my favorite authors from my younger years. Not sure which is my favorite: Valley of the Dolls or Once is Not Enough. Recommend both of them -- even all of these years later. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[Dominique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this in one day it is delightful

[Emmaline Murph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mix between The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and The Awakening.

[Gigi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in Barcelona when I was 18 after an all night bender and I was in a lounge chair in the scorching sun trying to stay awake. loved every minute. 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

[Eve Dangerfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was truly a wild, wild ride. Holy shit Jacqueline.

[Michael Dipietro · Rating 3 out of 5]

**spoiler alert**

Huh. This book didn't really start until about page 400. Up until that point was a whole bunch of meandering backstory, intertwined relationships and character development leading up to a whole bunch of nothing.. It had that classic Susann character that everyone desperately wants and no one can touch - they'll let you in only so far but won't be possessed and blah blah blah. That was pretty enjoyable to read as usual.

This book has all the trademark elements of smut. I mean, it is smut, right? But it's a '70s bestseller' version of smut. It has all the sensationalism that makes Jackie Susann great, with actual, graphic sex scenes in this one (these are just glossed / summarized in the other books if I remember right?). Even that aforementioned character that everybody kills themselves over was straight out of the pages of the few gay porn novels I've read. I guess that shouldn't surprise me.. except that the tragic 'downward spiral' ending of this one was more unexpected than devastating (which it is in Valley of the Dolls). It was more annoying and troubling - And, completed the smut-novel feel by killing off the innocent, lost main character after she wanders through so many new experiences with sex and drugs, giving it almost moralistic overtones.

This one was right in between Valley and The Love Machine, not as good as the former and not as hopelessly meandering as the latter. I guess the issue is that Jackie Susann seems like a lazy writer. Her books remind me so much of Thomas Hardy in their soap-opera-esque scope with many storylines, but in Hardy you know that all the characters will be inexplicably linked by a tragic ending. With Susann her big plot devices seemed grabbed out of thin air in a last ditch effort to actually do something with her characters. The pointless plot windings weren't crazy enough to find funny, and then I didn't care enough to really feel anything about the tragic parts.

I dunno, maybe I just started taking her too seriously.