“Once is not enough” is a novel about the “strangeness of love”, about the conflict of irresistible passions with the arguments of reason, with public morality. The heroine of the novel January Wayne's mad love for her own father determines her fate. In many ways, the passions of other characters are just as “lawless”—January’s fiancé, her adoptive mother, her best friend. The action of the novel takes place against the backdrop of a radical revaluation of cultural and moral values, the entry of new ideals into the hypocritical, but in its own way attractive world of traditional culture.