BOOK REVIEW : Living in Terror of a Lover’s Evil Child : HOMEWORK <i> by Margot Livesey</i> Viking $18.95, 347 pages

The criminality of children is a thorny and yet perversely thrilling subject--especially for an artist. As Renata Adler says in “Pitch Dark,” a quotation from which serves as the epigraph for Margot Livesey’s ambitious first novel: “It is children really, perhaps because so much is forbidden to them, who understand from within the nature of crime.”

“Homework” is Livesey’s attempt to create an evil young child and show how the aspirations and fates of the novel’s adult characters are completely undermined by this undersized 8-year-old whose skills in manipulation, lying and the murderous arts cannot help but remind us of the novelist William March’s ‘50s heroine, Rhoda Penmark, played by Patty McCormack in the movie version of “The Bad Seed.”

Although Livesey does not directly invoke “The Bad Seed,” the machinations of Jenny--her Machiavellianism, her facade of dainty innocence, her age--both bad girls are 8--invite a natural comparison between the fallen angels.

When the novel opens, Celia Gilchrist is already in a serious love affair with Jenny’s father, Stephen. Stephen is the perfect man--sensitive, loving, marriage-minded, intelligent, good-looking and romantic, handy around the house and the bed. Celia has practically fled London in order to extricate herself from an addictive romance with a deceptive blackguard; Stephen is recuperating from an emotionally vacant marriage to Jenny’s mother, the beautiful Helen. What Celia and Stephen seem to have found is stability, domestic bliss, an orderly life, civilized love.

From the beginning, Celia can tell that Jenny has Stephen where she wants him. In the cafeteria at the zoo, Celia notices Jenny’s gift for wheedling sweets out of her father. More disarming is Jenny’s response when Celia asks her which animal she especially liked.

“Which was your favorite animal?’ I asked Jenny.

“The wildcat,” she said without hesitation . . . .

“Why did you like the cat?”

“She gave me a pinched look, as if she did not wish the slightest sliver of expression to slip out. ‘Because he was alone.’

” . . . I followed her lead. ‘Did that make you feel sorry for him?’ I asked.

“I expected her to say yes and in my presumption already found that endearing, but she shook her head. ‘Then why?’ I persisted.

“ ‘I think he’s lucky.’ She took a bite of cake so large that her cheeks bulged.”

When Stephen drops her off at the end of the day, Celia suddenly remembers that she left a parcel lying on the seat:

” . . . ‘Jenny,’ I called, knocking on the glass.

“She stared at me. Her eyes, always dark, appeared totally black. Involuntarily, I found myself retreating before the force of her gaze, shuffling back a couple of steps. During the months I had known Jenny I had assumed, in spite of some difficult moments, that she was well disposed towards me; the malevolent intensity of the look she now bestowed upon me conveyed the exact opposite. It was almost, I thought, as if she hated me. I raised my hand but before I could knock again she had turned away. I saw her lips move as she said something to her father. The car slid forward. It gathered speed, the brake lights flared, and it disappeared into the main road. I was left standing, empty-handed, in the middle of the street.”

What starts out as a romance between Celia and the mild-mannered Stephen turns into a far more exciting pas de deux between Celia and Jenny. Certainly the relationship between Jenny and Celia makes for more interesting reading than the more conventional entanglement of the grown-up lovers. Where Jenny is a fully blown character motivated by complex longings, her father remains flat and pale. All he is is a nice man; thus we don’t quite understand the romantic connection between the adults. The only time he becomes interesting is when paternal devotion and guilt force him to distance himself from Celia, who alone sees Jenny for what she is.

As the romance of mutual hatred between the stepmother-apparent and the malevolent young girl reaches a feverish passion, the novel becomes much better than its beginning and middle promise. As Celia begins to recognize that her life is at stake, we are swept away in the last chapters by Livesey’s artful narrative. The last several pages are rife with a Hitchcockian suspense and a vivid re-creation of terror worthy of the master himself. We only wish that Livesey had imbued the rest of the book with comparable dramatic tension. In any event, we end up pleased to have been so deliciously scared, to have been kept up beyond our bedtime contemplating the dark side of the children we love best.

Next: Elaine Kendall reviews Dani Shapiro’s “Playing With Fire” (Doubleday).