SOMETHING INTERESTING IS going on here. Not so much in the novel itself, for The Voyage (Doubleday, 304 pages, $29.95) is essentially articulate escapism and middle-aged angst. The surprise element enters in when you stop to consider how few male novelists would choose to write about the vicissitudes and repercussions of an illicit romance. Robert MacNeil's protagonists are David, an ambitious career diplomat based in Ottawa, and Francesca, a vivacious Guyanese fashion model who finally settles in Finland, some twenty years after seducing him when he is a cautious 32 and she an adventurous 19. Their romance, which lasts for ten years and lingers in memory for another ten, frees David from the "dry, safe" cocoon of his Canadianism at the same time as it endangers everything he values outside of the sensuous world he shares with Francesca. The man should be doomed, and the woman with him, but MacNeil spins his cautionary tale without benefit of major casualties.

Informed detail, thoughtful characterization, and scrumptious political tidbits from the Mulroney and Trudeau years keep the story zipping briskly along, and the contrast between David's predictability and Francesca's impulsiveness provides agreeable suspense. Most interesting of all, however, remains the fact that this is a romantic novel written by a man. Now that it's OK for males to be sensitive, are we in for a spate of such novels? Come to think of it, I've recently had two otherwise proudly rational male friends confess to me how much they enjoyed The Bridges of Madison Country. Can Harlequins for men be far behind?