No Regrets

Kupfer's second novel ( Surviving the Seasons ) is like the swimming-allowed area of a roped-off lake; deep water is out there, but the action takes place where everyone can touch bottom. Sharon, the narrator, is content with marriage, motherhood and a part-time job writing household hints for a newsletter. She is disturbed when her best friend Barbara decides to leave her husband, but agrees to drive with Barbara and their three daughters from Urbana, Ill., to San Francisco, where Barbara rejoins her lover, the only insubstantial character in a book inhabited by recognizable human beings. While Sharon wonders what makes people unhappy, her daughter Libby wants to know why people have spit in their mouths. Consistently engaging, Sharon looks back on her life: the formative experiences of her childhood, her companionable marriage, the loss of a son to sudden crib death. The journey doesn't lead Sharon or Barbara to new discoveries, but reaffirms the choices each has made. Suggesting emotional depths without entering them, this novel offers the kind of cool and soothing, if shallow, summer reading many readers enjoy. First serial to Redbook. (June)