Once Is Not Enough — Jacqueline Susann

Jacqueline Susann follows her incredible successes Valley of the Dolls and The Love Machine with a story so touching, and so exciting in its twists of character relationships, that it will not only captivate her millions of devoted readers but will win her many new admirers.

The novel's theme -- daring, poignant, sensitively rendered -- is mental incest. January Wayne, named by an adoring father after the month in 1950 when she is born, is in love with her father. He is Mike Wayne, a renowned movie and theater producer, lover of many women, and, above all, a gambler. January's mother died when she was seven, and Mike was forced to place his daughter in a boarding school. But his weekends belonged to her. And on these weekends, she saw Mike, the father, the producer, the gambler -- and the most exciting man in the world. She grew up with only one thought, one desire; to enter his world, to take her place at his side.

She is twenty when she enters that world. But she finds it is a different world than the one she saw on those limousine weekends. And she learns it is a world in which she must search desperately for herself, and for fulfillment of her love. It is a world whose many strange and not always pleasant standards are set by people like Deirdre Mitford Granger, one of the richest women alive; David Milford, Deirdre's handsome young cousin, who seems a natural match for January; Karla, a world-famous motion picture star whose abrupt retirement and present hermetic life have made her legendary; Linda Riggs, still in her twenties, editor-in-chief of an up-and-coming women's magazine, whose private life is not at all in keeping with the stature of her well-earned public position; and, Tom Colt, a middle-aged, best-selling novelist who is very tough with his fists and can be very tender with his words.

It is among such people that the beautiful, naive January moves, looking for love. And it is, really, love -- with which Once Is Not Enough is concerned.

Love is the subject about which Jacqueline Susann writes best. This novel is a testament to that. It is her most human book, her most deeply felt, and for that her most satisfying in every way.