It's a short novel, but a complete one. Peter Bell, age 17, spends a summer between high school and college working his first job as counselor at a camp. We follow Peter's life-changing friendship with another male counselor and Peter's life-changing infatuation with a young woman. Peter is virginal and naive and moneyed; the young woman, as Peter discovers, is quite the opposite. Meanwhile Peter's friend Chad, who externally seems to have everything, turns out to have troubles within.

It's Goldman's second published novel, though I wonder if he wrote it earlier than the first, The Temple of Gold. In comparison to Temple, Curtsy seems somewhat overwrought and less in touch with the actual mechanics of human behavior. Still, it's Goldman, and he is always a marvelous writer. ( )