TRIANGULATION

Nostalgic and understated, Triangulation charts a love triangle among three British mapmakers in 1950s England and Africa. The novel opens in 1997, when narrator John Hopkins -- a dull, recently retired Ordinance Survey administrator -- takes an uncharacteristically spontaneous journey to visit his former love, surveyor Helen Gardner. While traveling, Hopkins recalls his decades-earlier rivalry for Helen's affections with his dashing, polar-opposite roommate, Laurance Wallace, renowned for conducting dangerous fieldwork in Africa. You don't exactly need a compass to figure out which man the bright and beautiful Helen chose, and Hopkins' plodding voice dampens this dark, passionate love story. B-