A Jewish Mother Late for Her Own Death : WAITING FOR NEXT WEEK <i> by Michele Orwin (Holt</i> ,<i> Rinehart & Winston: $17.95; 191 pp.)</i>

If art does, indeed, replicate life, then no major event or ritual in the mainstream Jewish novel should begin when scheduled. Naomi Asher, the matriarch and pivotal character in Michele Orwin’s first novel, knows this all too well: She has spent the last three years being late for her own death.

There is no question of Naomi’s recovery, only a matter of when the cancer that has been feeding on her will triumph. The four Asher children are grown and dispersed, with careers and preoccupations of their own. They gather now and then to pass time with Naomi, listen to her criticisms of nearly everything, withstand the litany of complaints from their father, Hersh, and arm-wrestle with the ghosts and guilts of family dynamic that possess each of them.

Now the tocsin is sounded--again. Naomi is failing--again. Surely she cannot last long--again.

The family begins to assemble at the New Jersey hospital where Naomi repairs at such times, to sit the death watch with her and in the process be wrenched back into childhood. As the Ashers gather, it becomes apparent that the news truly is bad this time--surely Naomi cannot last through the week.

“Waiting for Next Week” is largely about the Asher family in Naomi’s last week; an epilogue is set one year later, at the time when, in accordance with Jewish tradition, Naomi’s gravestone is consecrated. The narrative is related by Beth, youngest of the two Asher daughters, who, along with her younger brother, Billy, is the great target of her parents’ disdain and condescension. Sharon, a compulsive perfectionist overachiever, and Charles Aaron (nicknamed “Grim”), the idealized, much-married first son, readily accept the position that has been their birthright as the older children.

Through Beth’s recounting of the family activities and her growing realization and acceptance that this time it is real with Naomi, we get on- and off-stage accounts of her failed marriage, a romance she has just ended, and her fragile but poignant alliance with her younger brother, Billy.

Besides the Ashers, various family friends, doctors, and hospital supernumeraries associated with the operatic atmosphere of death watches (nurses, other patients, and their families) make appearances.

Perhaps most symptomatic of the guarded prognosis for “Waiting for Next Week,” the walk-on and cameo parts are better realized and more lively than any of the Ashers. In a few well-restrained strokes, novelist Orwin is able to impart to The Girls, a group of Naomi’s friends, a kind of Greek chorus quality with a pragmatic Jewish bite. Although Molly, a man-hunting nurse; Oscar, a family friend with an eye for younger women; and Cheryl, Billy’s girlfriend, skate close to cliche in their inceptions, they become tributes to Orwin’s inventiveness and ability to evoke interest.

The Ashers, Beth included, never seem to gain any real inertia--they largely eat compulsively and plod through the Slough of Despair. Trapped in attitudes and mannerisms that may be appealing on occasion, they do not convincingly engage or wrestle with problems or moral questions that produce the anguish, humor, and epiphany we have come to associate with novelists such as Toni Morrison, Anne Tyler or Muriel Spark.

There are no real surprises in “Waiting for Next Week,” a probable result of Orwin having chosen such a well-traveled street as the reflective Jewish family novel. Going up against Phillip Roth, Saul Bellow, and, to a degree, Malamud and Salinger requires a large measure of courage. Orwin has the technique to take on these worthies, but she spent all her chutzpah in the process and left none for storytelling.

The fey Beth and the M&M;’s-popping Billy Asher would do well to consider Weight Watchers or the Pritikin Diet and lure their creator into something with more traction.