The Reef, by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was too good a professional ever to write badly, but The Reef is one of her few obvious failures. Set in France among the usual American expatriates, it hovers around the theme of the Eternal Triangle, or perhaps in this case the Eternal Quadrilateral would be more apt. Henry James might have handled it all better - certainly he would not have made Anna, the main female character, so highminded, sensitive, understanding, and ultimately so much a pain in the neck. George Darrow, the diplomat who is her opposite number, is stereotyped and dim, so virtually the only living character is the lively, hoydenish Sophie Viner - though I have an uneasy suspicion that Wharton intended her to seem brash, modern and unfeminine. This is one literary reef on which the experienced novelist need not have run.