THE SUMMER DANCERS

This is a brief excursion through a labyrinth of Southern eccentricity focused mainly on the ridiculous Charlesfoot sisters, Sybella, Violet and the expatriated Laetitia, and the bizarre characters who wish to accommodate them in their wish to encourage the arts -- in a bayou setting. Assembled at the sisters' Thryllmyre plantation and representing, in one form or another, atrophied decadence are: the painter Ruper Suush ('Hamlet and Ophelia Struggling'); the novelist Sabrina Chain whose books were written twenty years before and who now asks only ""a corner near the fire""; Foster Merryn, an anguished poet of 40 coming apart at the seams; and the musicologist, Jenny Bean, determined to seduce the Charlesfoot's flighty little maid, Toddy Luze de Felice. The return of Laetitia and her illegitimate and despicably precocious son, De Lesseps and her sudden departure with Foster, the boy's father leaves the sisters browbeaten if not dejected and they revert to the core of their schoolgirl curriculum at the Convent of the Penitent Magdalenes -- sewing. An entertaining bit of froth.