I don't even know what to say. This was...an experience. Being a huge Fawlty Towers fangirl, I've always wanted to try a book by Harold Robbins. Basil's disparaging comments were more than enough to arouse my curiosity re: this prolific author of glittery, trashy schlock. And boy howdy, Janette is terrible. If this wasn't by an established author (BWAHAHA! :D) it would never have been endorsed by a respectable publisher. Supposing Robbins had used a pseudo -- Dick B. Hugest, perhaps? -- this POS would've been passed down to some raunchy fly-by-night press like "Softcover Library" & discreetly purchased by skeezy-looking gents in trench coats & mufflers....But no. Because dear ol' Harold was shameless enough to claim this manuscript as his own, it somehow slipped past the editors at Simon & Schuster, thereby infesting Waldenbooks & airport bookstalls everywhere. Verily, in the words of Family Guy: Goodbye, Janette happened. And we let it happen. :PSupposedly this book has a plot about fashion houses, multi-billion-dollar corporations, & Nazi profiteering. But honestly, who cares? Not the characters -- they're too busy screwing and/or slicing each other with razors. From top to bottom, these are a pack of unlikable asshats whose collective brains wouldn't fill a teacup. For my part, the only personages who inspired a glimmer of interest were Tanya, the matriarch of the family, & Harvey, the stoned surfer who did nothing but smoke weed & sunbathe. Everyone else was dancing a conga line of disposable, interchangable idiocy & sexual liaisons. Content warnings: incest, BDSM, soaked panties, giant dongs, crass and/or un-PC language, nipples, oral sex, PHALLUSES, drugs, more oral sex, anal sex, gay sex, lesbian sex, threesomes, pedobear, EVUL pedobear, vengeful Greek tycoons, an assortment of bodily fluids, soul-shattering orgasms, & plastic surgery. I can't even. Basil was right. Harold Robbins, you suck. :D
A lot of people have reviewed this book over the years and the consensus seems to be split between a well written novel with plenty of erotica and a trashy porn story masquerading as a novel.Harold Robbins in my opinion has provided us with an excellent piece of writing in this novel.To look at Goodbye Janette solely as a good yarn or a smut fest is doing both the writer and the reader a grave injustice.There is in my opinion an element of this book that goes far beyond wealth and sex.Harold Robbins has built a magnificent story line spanning continents and years, He has built strong characters that are believable, he has taken us inside the minds of these characters to the extremely complicated world of the human psychic.This is a glimpse beyond the fine clothes and opulent life styles of the rich and powerful.Yes there are scenes of a graphic sexual nature but surely this is an everyday occurrence in life. Robbins is asking the reader to look beyond what is glaringly obvious to a world that exists for rich and poor alike. A world where power over others is bye and large gained by domination.Goodbye Janette is not only a great read but a reminder to us all that not everything that glitters is gold. It is also a valuable lesson that those at the top are not always the best role models.
What do You think about Goodbye, Janette (1993)?
On the cover it says, “More Daring, More Shocking, More Deeply Erotic Than Anything Ever Written!” I was intrigued. What was shocking in 1981? Would it be like Anais Nin… shocking for the time, but not so much now? No. This shit shocked me. The story didn’t really progress further than sex scene after violent sex scene until midway through the book. Then it became about the greed and hedonism of the very rich. Which, frankly, has been told before. Plenty of times. It worked though. The shock was there. Even for me, twenty-six years later. I wouldn’t have said that I was easily surprised by any sort of sex, but you know, rape by a step father in which the young girl suddenly starts screaming, “I’m your whore Papa! Slap my face!”… A turn I certainly wasn’t expecting. The story was unimpressive, but it still worked and did exactly what it said it was going to do. A book with honor, you've got to appreciate that.
—Tory
