Three Most Scandalous Books read by Me : Once Is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann

This was the first dirty or rather should I say trash in fiction which I read and that too when I was just 15 years old. I know that girls far younger than what I was, read trash these days but this was way back in the mid nineties and I was growing up in a small town called Guwahati, where things were really simple and I had a very sheltered upbringing. So this book was a very big shock for me, in terms of the story, the sexual content and even the dialogues. And the best part was that I had stolen this book from the attic during the pre Diwali cleaning. Should I be ashamed of myself for stealing and reading such a book? Some might say yes, but I do not agree. I was very curious to read such a book and that's what I did, though, I did not enjoy it much. I was rather very shocked and shaken up on reading this book, as till then all I had read was Enid Blyton, P.G.Wodehouse and a few Nancy Drews here and there.

I was not comfortable about this whole incident and later I confessed my crime to my mom but she surprisingly took it very lightly. Hence, I have never felt any guilt about it.

Now let's talk about the story- the story is set in the seventies era and the central character is a young girl, January Wayne, daughter of a big-time Broadway producer. The entire story revolves around her and how she grows up in this misleading and confusing glamorous world. January is very very fond of her father but not in a daughterly manner, it is more of incest here.( This was shock no.1 for me). Then there is her stepmother who is having a roaring lesbian affair with a middle aged movie actress( shock no.2 for me). Scenes full of drug abuse and explicit sexual content was like "the cherry on the icing" in my shock intake. 

Now when I think of this book, all the content which shocked the innocent me seems very dated and boring. But at that time I was truly scandalised and firmly believed to have grown up with a full understanding of how the world operates, after reading this one dirty book. 

Once is Not Enough is a typical no brainer and I would not read it, now at this age, even if I had nothing else to do. I would rather watch trash then read trash.