BOOK REVIEW : A Tale of Meanness That Reaches Out From the Grave : PASSING ON<i> by Penelope Lively</i> Grove-Weidenfeld $17.95, 210 pages

The English countryside has always been there for English authors to write about. Miss Marple eavesdrops among its hedges; in Evelyn Waugh’s “Scoop,” John Boot blathers on about “the questing vole” that moves “feather-footed through the plashy fen.” Even in that musical a while back, “The Boyfriend,” an elderly couple got to sing in duet: “You’re never too old to climb a stile,” “Climb a stile?” “Yes, climb a stile!” Americans accept all this contentedly, even though they’ve never seen a vole or know the function of a stile, or have even been paying attention enough in English class to know that in England, a fender sits in front of a fire, instead of on the side of a car.

We love it anyway, that mocked-up countryside, because it has what we never will: Utter tranquility, coupled with a high, high degree of civilization and “refinement.” Here, for tranquility, we must journey to Ohio or Wyoming or West Texas. For civilization, to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. No wonder the English countryside novel offers us such consolation. We will never give it up, nor should we.

But “Passing On” is not the finest example of this genre. Sure, we find a “village, at the outer rim of the Cotswolds.” A sister and brother, 52-year-old Helen and 49-year-old Edward, live in a shambles of a house called Greystones, in which--observes their younger sister, Louise, who has married and gone to live in London, producing two leather-clad teen-agers, Suzanne and Phil--”There is absolutely nothing that is nice to look at.”

If Greystones is drab, however, the family does own a couple of acres out back, a sort of semi-forest called the Britches. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there must be a Philistine pig somewhere close around (a scuzzball of a man named Ron) who wants to buy the Britches and fill it with cheap and sleazy affordable housing. Country novels must include a villain out to wreck the village way of life: In another Evelyn Waugh novel, “A Handful of Dust,” there was that vile woman who wanted to redecorate a centuries-old drawing room in sheepswool and chrome.

But the real villain here has just died, and the funeral takes place in Chapter 1: “Dorothy Glover, at 80, has not had friends. Indeed she had not had many at 60 or 40, or even, perhaps, at 20.” Helen, Dorothy’s daughter, remembers that:

“Mother was not a nice woman. I have always known that, and I can say it, because I am her daughter and so in the nature of things came nearer to loving her than anyone else ever did.” There’s no argument about that, no mitigating factor, no psychological explanation about why she was such a vicious monster during her long and destructive life. She just was , and all her children know it. The awful part is that she has contrived to go on destroying after her death: Not for any reason except that it was/is her nature--the way a scorpion must sting.

In her first post-death act, Dorothy has left Greystones, not to the grown children who have cared for her for so many years, but to that leather-clad grandson, Phil. This keeps Helen and Edward powerless, tenants in their own home. Dorothy has left them the Britches, but of course they can’t sell it.

Helen, in the slow, numb work of cleaning up and pitching out all the dusty artifacts of the last 60 years lived in this house, finds evidence of how her mother contrived to thwart and wreck her life: Love letters not delivered, a yellow muslin dress crammed away at the bottom of a trunk.

Helen’s color, always, was to be brown. But there is a chance, the very faintest chance, that some of this might change. A sweet-talking barrister begins coming around, supposedly chatting about the terms of her mother’s will. He’s the type every woman will recognize--handsome, coquettish, narcissistic, a confirmed womanizer. Still, no matter what he is, Helen feels lust, even though the voice of her mother taunts her at every turn, reminding her of her age, her thighs, her dull personality.

The bachelor brother, Edward, suffers a painful awakening of his own. Free of his mother’s suffocation, he finds he is a homosexual. And Phil, the grandson-punker, thrown out of his London home, comes to live at Greystones. From these events, an end comes. I found it too sad.

How big a victory is it finally to fling out the wadded-up nylon hose that had served as kitchen sponges for decades? Or finally to sell a clock that does not tick? True, a life is saved here, but for what? I think the vicious, thwarting mother won, and ruined three lives. That’s something I don’t want to know, even if it’s true.

Next: Lee Dembart reviews “Astronomer by Chance” by Bernard Lovell.