Bad Summer People

The midsummer picnic superficially appears to be a celebration of community and tradition. Under the surface, however, it highlights the cliquishness, shallowness, and social competition that infect the entire community, poisoning each group interaction that occurs during the summer. A true community might organize a collective event at which burgers and hotdogs are provided to everyone, regardless of social status. Instead, the summer people of Salcombe cluster in their own little groups, jealously guarding their own long-established places on the green. Accordingly, each isolated group has its traditional cuisine, and even within the groups, they compete with one other to produce the most impressive entrées.

Salcombe society revolves around tennis, especially among the women. The tennis competition stands as a socially acceptable way for the women to express the hidden levels of competition that motivate their actions. For example, Rachel, who is particularly needy and hungry for attention, is also the most competitive of the tennis players and the most upset by the prospect of losing the game. Her loss at tennis to Lauren and Jen—the women she most envies—provokes her to reveal Jason’s betrayal to Sam. Jen and Lauren’s willingness to play tennis together also introduces an element of irony, given the fact that they are developing a closer friendship at the same time that Jen is sleeping with Lauren’s husband.

For the summer people, Salcombe represents both a status symbol and an oasis. Their retreat there every summer reflects their wish to reconnect with the idyllic world of their childhood and detach themselves from the day-to-day grind of reality. Fire Island is meant to be an Eden, and while there, the characters are reminded that they were once just as innocent as all the other children of Salcombe. They come back to Salcombe every summer in an attempt to recapture that paradise, but as the novel unfolds, it becomes ever clearer that they are chasing a mirage, for they can reclaim a shadow of their former innocence. Instead of escaping their problems, they simply bring them along to the island and manifest them in a purer, more dangerous form, for just as the relatively permissive aura of the island allows the summer people to escape their usual reality, it also provides them with infinite possibilities for indulging in their own morally ambiguous desires. And ironically, once they push those boundaries too far, they are eventually expelled from their chosen paradise and condemned to continue lives of dissatisfaction and mediocrity.