You've heard the sayings, 'the sequel is never as good' and 'the book is always better than the movie'. Return to Peyton Place is in fact a good novel, but like most sequels it does not match the qualities of the original that made it such a fantastic story.

Allison MacKenzie, the protagonist of Peyton Place is again the focus of this story. Very early in the piece she gets a call from her New York agent and he tells her that her manuscript has been accepted by a small but distinguished publisher. And that's just the start of the dramas to come.

The sequel focuses more on Allison's career - and also on selected characters - and thus has less of the scope of the original. One of the great things about the first book was that it went very, very deep into almost every aspect of life in the small town. It was told in such a way that the readers' emotions matched the scale of the novel's outlook. Yet just as in the first novel, Metalious begins with geography, with the weather. Again, the environment is almost a character; with good reason, as weather and climate affect us more than many would care to assume.

But here, it's more of an extention of the first book rather than a continuing exploration. And overall that is not a bad thing. Metalious had created some characters that after only a short while you truly felt attached to and in her sequel she succeeds in the way she brings them back. To have them back at all: that alone would certainly be cause to read the new book.

And as the scope is less broad, this novel is suitably a little shorter than the original. Perhaps a bit of a shame that it wasn't longer, but Metalious has shown good judgement nevertheless in not risking more action which may just be repetitive or bog the story down. One wonders how many significant changes (if any) she made at the suggestion of her editor - because after all, her main character will no doubt have to face the same thing with her novel.

Metalious's style is not as sophisticated as that of John le Carre's for example, but despite that she is a great storyteller. You might wonder, though, whether the fact that this book has less scope and detail and complexity is partly due to the author somehow rushing through it. It's as if she didn't want to take too much time writing a novel as finely weaved as her first one. But it's not as if what's there feels like it's a rushed job.

Metalious has an indirect style of describing events. You go along with something that seems not to be heading to any sure outcome, and later you learn of the final, summarized result through other characters. Not that this is bad - in fact it works quite well assuming that the author wanted to keep this novel a bit shorter than the original one. If she didn't describe events through other characters, we'd probably still get a summary but from the narrator's point of view.

Where Peyton Place was a great novel, the sequel could be accused of being almost a soap opera, seeing as the author chose to focus on fewer characters and in a little less detail. But this book is not merely a soap.

In a soap opera, the details don't matter as much as how people react to them and what they do as a consequence. Metalious knows what she is writing about, although she hasn't exactly spent ten years of active research finding out, unlike Tom Wolfe would do.

It's not right to demand that good literature be heavy winded and have little or no action lest it take away from the long-windedness. The first novel was a perfect blend of mood, dialogue, characterization and action. This one concentrates more on people and what happens to them, but the quality is still evident. Maybe it's just because we're drawn to these characters as a follow-on from the first novel, but this is a novel where you definitely care about the characters (or at least some of them).

Because of that, it's a little disappointing to see Metalious's dialogue a bit too 'homely' or contrived in places, particularly where the Rossi family is concerned. And sometimes the characters speak action where it could be either more subtley put or described in another way. The ending, though not disappointing, still could have been better. Phillip K. Dick, author of the greatest sci-fi you could ever read had the same problem: fantastic stories, great ideas and a not-so-fantastic ending.

Return to Peyton Place won't move you as strongly as the original novel, but nevertheless you still feel for the characters and you know you won't forget them after the last page is read and the cover closed for the last time.