In many ways No Adam in Eden is the story of Armand Bergeron and his odyssey from a French-Canadian farm to prosperous baker in upstate New York. Metalious traces Bergeron's life back to his ancestors in France and follows the gradual decline of his spoiled and bitchy daughter until the end when his granddaughter, Lesley, finds contentment in the bed of her Italian-American husband. Gone from this novel are the small-town types which inhabited Peyton Place (1956) and Cooper's Mills. The doctor betrays his patient and Bergeron; he is neither wise nor kind. For the most part the haughty and prejudiced do not get their comeuppance. Armand, whose only sin is ignorance, lives a life of misery, married to a woman who with psychotic intensity seems to delight in torturing him both sexually and emotionally. Armand and his wife Angelique live and work at cross purposes.

Angelique desperately wants...