Phillip Lopate's "Confessions of Summer" is about a romantic triangle, that most lopsided and confession-inducing of human arrangements. Mr. Lopate has set his novel in New York City over a period of three summers, and its concerns are giddy, in keeping with both the weather and the locale. The characters, especially, are a recognizably urban breed: they remind me—from their preoccupation with one another's level of intelligence to their interest in obscure old movies—of a lot of people I seem to know. (p. 10)

You probably have to be part of such a triangle to appreciate its peculiar compulsion; otherwise there is a great risk of becoming irritated and then bored. An added difficulty in the case of Mr. Lopate's threesome is that he never really manages to convey the lure of Marie. She sounds like a very pretty, very spoiled child—the femme fatale of the...