Despite its peculiarities and stereotyped minor characters, "Getting It Right" gives a humorous peek at a social world that seems quite credible. The situation, of course, is serious and preposterous at the same time. The solemnity accorded anything pertaining to Gavin's sexual encounters seems out of proportion, especially since every other facet of human behavior is treated as a fit target for ridicule. The novel is often quite funny, but the minute the lights go down, the prose takes on a funereal glow and the reader gets the rather unexpected sense of being on sacred ground, with the narrator's tone, full of pomp and significance, seeming to sound the stern alert, "definitely no laughing aloud." Such sanctimony is likely to make a skeptical reader more so, and Gavin Lamb does not hold up very well under such scrutiny….

[Gavin's] ailment and [his] cure, however, seem oddly out of...