When The Outrageous Is the Norm THE HOUSEGUEST

By Paul Gray

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 trash collector, will be able to live up to the lofty standards of manners and deportment that prevail in the Graves family. Still, the weather is sunny and warm enough to soothe implicit tensions. And everyone is looking forward to another marvelous breakfast prepared by the houseguest of the past week, Chuck Burgoyne.

Nothing in this scene overtly suggests the imminence of comic catastrophe. But experienced readers of Thomas Berger will immediately put on their crash helmets and fasten the safety belts. Newcomers are advised to follow suit. The Houseguest, Berger's 15th novel, picks up some of the pieces scattered by the explosive anarchy of his Neighbors (1980). Once again, an apparently stable domestic setting warps and buckles into chaos, and kindred characters struggle to adjust to a world in which the outrageous has suddenly become the norm.

The first thing that goes awry this fine Sunday morning is that Chuck oversleeps, leaving the promised breakfast unmade and each of the Graveses peckish and unsettled. When he finally appears, the man who has so far embodied "Doug's idea of a perfect houseguest in all ways" behaves oddly. He takes advantage of a moment alone with Doug to confide that one of Doug's recently ditched mistresses has been threatening to make trouble, but then assures his host, "This is something that requires no effort at all on your part. I'll see it's taken care of."

Chuck's information leaves Doug profoundly embarrassed and a little confused: "With all respect to the young man, it did not seem right that he would assume authority in this matter." Indeed, the effrontery rapidly escalates. Before long, Chuck is in Doug's bedroom demanding a signed blank check and displaying (accidentally?) a holstered revolver strapped around his ankle. Doug is shaken by this experience. "How's that for a Sunday at the shore?" he complains to his daughter-in-law. "You can get your head blown off for no reason, by a houseguest you don't even know."

It turns out that none of the Graveses has invited Chuck; each assumes that he is another's friend. By the time they make this discovery, though, it may be too late. Having committed improprieties ranging from theft to sexual assault against individual family members, Chuck seems to be planning something supremely unpleasant for the Graveses as a group. Both phone lines are mysteriously out of order, and neither of the two cars on the isolated premises will start. What is to happen when night falls?

At this point, Berger turns his preposterous tale upside down. Emphasis shifts from the marauding intruder to the beleaguered defenders of house and home: compared with his avenging victims, Chuck begins to seem positively sane and benign. "Look," Doug argues, "this man has abused our hospitality! Can there be a greater crime?" This rallying cry comes after Chuck has been ambushed and trussed up, and the decision has been made to haul him out to the swimming pool and drown him. When the helpless victim-to-be makes a provocative remark, he gets a stinging rebuke: " 'Shut up, you rat!' ordered Bobby, jerking Chuck at the armpit. 'You don't know anything about the way decent people act!' "

As it happens, neither Chuck nor The Houseguest concludes in a watery death. Berger's tricks and surprises keep accumulating until the acerbic end. But some literalists will wonder, What is the meaning of all this? Surely these surface improbabilities add up to something real? The author tosses out some hints that there may be method in Chuck's madness, an assault by the lower classes on idle, etiolated rich people like Doug and Audrey. At one point the houseguest reveals that he is related to the Finches, a raggedy clan of year- round islanders who do menial jobs for the summer residents. Is Chuck the vanguard, as Doug begins to suspect, of a "peasant uprising"? Surrounded by his angry hosts, Chuck mounts a vigorous verbal defense: "I wasn't born to privilege . . . Nor did I marry into it. I had to hack my own way up out of the swamp, with damn little help from anybody."

Readers who take Chuck at his word will probably believe anything. It was such gullibility, after all, that led Doug, Audrey, Bobby and Lydia into nightmarish folly. In truth, The Houseguest harbors no hidden messages that can stand up to reasoned analysis. The novel instead is a rare example of buoyantly irresponsible comedy, a piling up of non sequiturs for the pure pleasure of creating progressive confusion. At his best, as he is here, Thomas Berger can command attention solely as a lonely, insidious voice insisting, in a stage whisper, that fiction can be stranger than truth.