BOOK REVIEW : Sojourn in the Land of Tofu-Eaters : FAULTY GROUND <i> by Gabrielle Donnelly</i> , Gollancz/David & Charles $19.95, 254 pages

Attitudes toward California seem to harden as one travels east, mellowing only after the international dateline is crossed. This tentative theory may explain why New Yorkers and Londoners write satiric books about us while the Japanese scramble to annex us.

Susan Barnes, the central character in this novel by an Englishwoman now living here, would never have come to Los Angeles if the ceiling of her London flat hadn’t fallen in. Susan is a literary scholar, at work on an introduction to a new edition of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” a task she finds impossible to complete under a shower of plaster. When a letter from her cousin Joanna arrives with a glowing description of her blissful life in Southern California, Susan impulsively decides to visit the city “she’d always associated with sun-beached surfers, movie stars and Disneyland.”

Once recovered from jet lag, Susan finds herself enjoying Los Angeles despite her misgivings. Joanna has turned the garage into a guest room for her cousin; her handsome filmmaker husband Mike actually seems pleased at the thought of a house guest, and the beach is within walking distance. Reluctantly, Susan acknowledges that the place may actually have some merits. There are even “well-thumbed” books in the house, an amenity Susan hadn’t expected.

Of course, Joanna has changed. Once a fiercely talented painter, she has become an art teacher, turning out blandly pretty pictures in her spare time, demonstrating that once an artist moves here, she will never do any good work again. Contentment has blurred her edges and broadened her hips, alterations perceived by Susan as ominous.

Instead of using her summer vacation profitably, Joanna seems happy to spend her days reading romances and her evenings playing earth mother to undeserving acquaintances. Susan, on the other hand, has remained lean and ambitious in London, her wit honed by her affair with her publisher, a married man with no intentions whatever of leaving his wife. Joanna considers this situation deplorable, and would like nothing better than to see her cousin a happily married convert to the Southern California lifestyle.

After meeting her hosts’ circle of friends, a haphazard and stereotypical mix including an unhappy homosexual pair, a promiscuous actress between jobs and a vacuous couple who epitomize yuppiehood in the late ‘80s, Susan finds her initial enthusiasm fading. Only one member of the group is familiar with Jane Austen; the food and wine taste equally of sugar, and she feels as if she might be drowning “in a butt of Malmsey,” though she has become so Californianized that she can’t remember the source of the quote. Worse still, Joanna’s mother-in-law Eileen has attempted to fix her up with a young doctor, a gesture Susan finds grossly insulting.

After Susan sees a man shoot a woman on a Venice street, her disenchantment is complete. Happily, her English lover Felix will be in Los Angeles for a few days, and they’ll be able to demolish the California cliches together.

Alas, when Felix arrives, looking “unwholesome and grey,” he suffers by comparison to Joanna’s appealing husband Mike. Felix’s acerbic wit seems to have suffered a sea (or air) change, and his comments seem egregiously flip and ill-natured.

When Susan tells him about the street murder, he quite fails to see its significance. Susan “took a sip of her wine, distancing herself from him, wondering whether it was the Los Angeles air that presented him in so unattractive a light.”

In a sudden apercu, Susan realizes that she’s fallen in love with Mike, becoming yet another victim of his careless and superficial charm. Clearly, Susan must return to London at once, while she still can salvage the moral integrity so imperiled by her sojourn among the tofu-eaters and adulterers.

Just before her departure, Joanna’s well-meaning, widowed mother-in-law invites her to a farewell dinner. “Susan smiled, her old, acid London smile. ‘If you’re so desperate for company,’ she asked, ‘why don’t you buy a guinea pig?’ ” So much for that vaunted tart English wit, which makes Californian insincerity seem adorable.

We leave Susan boarding the plane to London, sadder and wiser, having confirmed the Myth of the Mindless Surfer and successfully resisted its insidious lure.

Next: Carolyn See reviews “To the Birdhouse” by Cathleen Schine.