In the 1920's, all the best people hang out at the Paradise Point Inn, a restricted Lake George hostelry owned by a close-knit association of three families. And the best of this 50 year reprise ["All the Best People"] re-creates the folkways of upper-middle-class life around the Lake during the eras of boom and bust. Mr. Wilson concentrates on two clans, the Stauffers and the Campbells….

As fortunes rise and wane, sailboat racing becomes a psychodrama for family hostilities, life at the hotel ambles on …, and the younger generation gropes innocently for its first love. When the younger Campbell son marries the Stauffer's younger daughter, the story loses its freshness and falls into a standard stereotype. Still, Mr. Wilson … has enough zest for the early days to give his novel a healthy momentum before it finally runs down.

Martin Levin, in a review of "All the Best People," in...