Books: When The Outrageous Is the Norm THE HOUSEGUEST

by Thomas Berger; Little, Brown; 240 pages; $16.95

A June Sunday dawns at Doug and Audrey Graves' summer house, which sits on choice island property that has been in Doug's family for three generations. Doug, 54, is spending the weekend at this retreat, away from the city where he desultorily practices law and enthusiastically philanders. Audrey, 51, ensconced for the season and steadily tippling vodka in the privacy of her own bedroom, feels a bit edgy over the arrival, a week earlier, of their unprepossessing son Bobby and the stranger he introduces as his new wife. Audrey wonders whether Lydia, nee Di Salvo, the daughter of a prosperous private...

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