Where can I find book reviews? Besides Amazon...?

Question

I need to get a legitimate CRITIC's reviews on the BOOK "Once Is Not Enough" by Jacqueline Susann. It cannot be a customer's or for the movie. Amazon has two short ones that are on the back of the book cover. I found really good ones for "Valley of the Dolls" but cannot seem to find any for this one. I've tried Barnes and Noble (couldn't find any besides customer), Amazon, NoveList... and even in search engines but nothing seems to pop up. The book was pubished in 1973, re-realeased in 1998 but all I can seem to find is reviews for Valley of the Dolls or The Love Machine. My last resort is an article on "Once Is Not Enough" but I can't even find that.

So could anyone PLEASE tell me where I can find legitimate BOOK reviews or articles that are not from a customer???

Thank you!!

I couldn't find any at the Barnes and Noble site and the book was published 33 years ago

Answer 1

I looked at the databases BooksInPrint, Book Review Digest Plus, Book Index With Reviews, MLA, WorldCat...and found nothing resembling a book review.

This is what I was able to find:

Jacqueline Susann

1921-1974


Nationality: American
Entry Updated : 09/05/2003
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA

Genre(s): Romance/Historical fiction; Plays

Award(s):
Valley of the Dolls has been cited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling novel of all time.

Table of Contents:
Personal Information
Career
Writings
Media Adaptations
Sidelights
Further Readings About the Author

Personal Information: Family: Born August 20, 1921, in Philadelphia, PA; died of cancer, September 21, 1974, in New York, NY; daughter of Robert (a portrait artist) and Rose (a teacher; maiden name: Jans) Susann; married Irving Mansfield (a television and film producer); children: Guy. Education: Studied ballet and drama in New York, NY.


Career: Began as model, and later actress, appearing in more than twenty Broadway plays and road company productions, including "The Women," 1937, "She Gave Him All She Had" and "When We Are Married," 1939, "My Fair Ladies" and "Banjo Eyes," 1941, "Jackpot" and "The Lady Says Yes," 1944, and Off-Broadway in "The Madwoman of Chaillot," 1970; author and novelist, 1962-74. Made frequent appearances on television dramas, panels, and commercials.
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:


(With Beatrice Cole) "Lovely Me" (play), produced on Broadway, 1946.

Every Night, Josephine! (nonfiction), Geis, 1963.

Valley of the Dolls: A Novel, Geis, 1966.

The Love Machine (novel), Simon & Schuster, 1969.

Once Is Not Enough (novel), Morrow, 1973.

Dolores (novel), Morrow, 1976.

Yargo, Bantam, 1978.
Contributor to magazines.

Media Adaptations:Among Susann's best-sellers adapted as screenplays are "Valley of the Dolls," released by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1967, "The Love Machine," released by Columbia in 1971, and "Once Is Not Enough," released by Paramount in 1975.


"Sidelights"

Jacqueline Susann was the first author to publish two number-one best-sellers back to back, and simultaneously to face the nearly unanimous outrage of critics. When asked if she read the reviews of her novels Valley of the Dolls and The Love Machine, the actress-turned-writer responded: "I'd like to have the critics like me, I'd like to have everybody like what I write. But when my book sells, I know people like the book. That's the most important thing, because writing is communication." Moreover Susann contended, "The day is over when the point of writing is just to turn a phrase that critics will quote, like Henry James. I'm not interested in turning a phrase; what matters to me is telling a story that involves people. The hell with what critics say. I've made characters live, so that people talk about them at cocktail parties, and that, to me, is what counts. You have to have a divine conceit in your judgment. I have it."
When the author of Valley of the Dolls was criticized as being a writer of pornography, she explained such was not her motivation: "I don't think it is a dirty book," she told Roy Newquist. "I do believe, however, that you cannot define characters without identifying them with the sexual acts they would commit and the language they would use. For example, it is one sort of person who would say, `Oh, for goodness' sake!' when a rehearsal went wrong. You would know that woman has restraint, a basic dignity, and is likely to be in command of a given situation. But when a performer blows sky-high, loses control of herself and her tongue, and lashes out at everyone in sight, then you are aware of the deficiencies in personality and character that will play themselves out in later events in the novel. . . . If I didn't sometimes show these characters at their more bestial, weaker moments, I'd have written a dishonest book. Frankly, I'd rather risk being called the author of a dirty book than the author of a weak or inaccurate one."

As Nora Ephron noted, "If Jacqueline Susann is no literary figure, she is nevertheless an extraordinary publishing phenomenon. . . . With the possible exception of Cosmopolitan magazine, no one writes about sadism in modern man and masochism in modern woman quite as horribly and accurately as Jacqueline Susann." In addition, Ephron was able to identify the reason behind the incredible success of Susann's first best-seller: "Valley had a message that had a magnetic appeal for women readers: it described the standard female fantasy--of going to the big city, striking it rich, meeting fabulous men--and went on to show every reader that she was far better off than the heroines in the book--who took pills, killed themselves, and made general messes of their lives. It was, essentially, a morality tale. And despite its reputation, it was not really a dirty book. Most women, I think, do not want to read hard-core pornography. They do not even want to read anything terribly technical about the sex act. What they want to read about is lust. And Jacqueline Susann gave it to them."

Susann's second best-seller, The Love Machine, evoked another storm of criticism. Setting up the criterion for passing judgment on it, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt remarked that since it was going to "be devoured like popcorn at a Saturday matinee,. . . it's irrelevant to judge it by any standard other than popcorn." He found it "salty (lots of four-letter words sprinkled into a morally square container). It dissolves in your mouth (the characters are so flat and interchangeable that at times I even forgot who Robin Stone was). It doesn't fill you up (I doubt if I've ever read a novel that made less of an impression). It goes down quickly and easily. It is the kernel of an idea, the seed of an inspiration, exploded into bite-sized nothingness."

To Jonathan Baumbach, "reading The Love Machine is a numbingly mindless experience. Its effect is narcotic. Miss Susann asks her readers not to think, not to feel, and, before all, not to see--nothing is asked and all is given. In a sense, the book is a collaboration--a shared inhuman cultural fantasy between author and readers, a reinforcement of culture-induced fantasies. Where real literature disturbs, books like The Love Machine comfort. It is only child's play to read but offers gratifyingly easy solutions. . . . The subliminal message of the novel is stay as stupid as you are." He continued, "The main thrust of the novel is hedonistic--characters hop in and out of bed with one another in various combinations--but the novel opts finally for the middle-class puritan verities. . . . On the face of it, The Love Machine deplores the amoral world it describes. . . . Integrity and love triumph over hedonism and ambition. The Love Machine subscribes to cultural convention so successfully because it believes in it. There is no discernible vision in the novel outside popular culture's vision of itself, no higher intelligence, no other context." Baumbach concluded that "the novel is written in the very language of its world--a language wholly incapable of accounting for human experience, a language geared to genocide."

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

BOOKS


Authors in the News, Volume 1, Gale, 1976.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 3, Gale, 1975.

Seaman, Barbara, Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann, Seven Stories (New York, NY), 1996.

PERIODICALS


Chicago Tribune, February 17, 1983.

Cosmopolitan, January, 1967.

Harper's, October, 1969.

Life, May 30, 1969.

Nation, September 1, 1969.

New Statesman, March 8, 1968.

New Yorker, August 14, 1995, p. 66.

New York Times Book Review, May 11, 1969.

Punch, January 31, 1968.

Saturday Evening Post, February 24, 1968.

Village Voice, January 25, 1968.

Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003.

Gale Database: Contemporary Authors

Answer 2

Try New York Times. Mishicot Kauai is a pretty good reviewer. There should be a "search" option where you can indicate the name of the book. See what comes up. More details click the following link..

Answer 3

Try New York TImes. Mishiko Kakutani is a pretty good reviewer. There should be a "search" option where you can indicate the name of the book. See what comes up.

Answer 4

try typing the name of the book in search. i have found some that way. newspapers, mags usually run reviews. go back and search that year (1973, or 1998) in papers entertainment section and see what can be found. go to the library and ask the reference desk employee how and what to do, many times they can find the answer or give you ideas.

Answer 5

Legitamate reviews are published on regular bases by the leading newspapers...
Good luck!

Answer 6

go to barnes and nobles website