FICTION

LIKE CHINA by Varley O’Connor (William Morrow & Co.: $18.95; 290 pp.). It should be said that this book has nothing to do with China; “Like China” means a place that is incomprehensible. The novel tries to make sense of why a woman stays with a man who beats her up, phychologically abuses her and destroys her sense of herself as a person. The story portrays cruelty as a compelling power, a dramatic one certainly, one that draws its victims close again and again, like the proverbial moth to flame. The wife, a former model, is young, blond and pretty. The husband is a mean alcoholic with a kind streak. Eventually the battered wife doesn’t even try to rationalize her attraction to the handsome sadist, she just keeps returning to him. The author skillfully depersonalizes the main character, giving just enough glimpses into her background to provide an outline of her an an individual, attributes that are beaten out of her as the victimization syndrome becomes dominant.