Transforming the Magdalene Myth : WOMAN RUNNING IN THE MOUNTAINS, <i> By Yuko Tsushima (Pantheon: $22; 220 pp.)</i>

One of the conventions of modern narrative is that women must be punished for giving in to their sexual natures. From “Anna Karenina” to “thirtysomething,” female characters who forget the needs of their husbands and children in moments of passion are likely to be struck down by trains, cancer or worse. Faithfully reflecting society, the stories we grow up with have frightening messages for all women who have felt the flaming, sovereign call of sexual love or the dreamy compulsion of inexplicable desire.

In her novel “Woman Running in the Mountains,” acclaimed Japanese writer Yuko Tsushima has written an inspiring and generous story that transforms the myth. Tsushima ignores the conventional pieties about women in exactly the way in which women must ignore them if we are to avoid the entrapment of a choice between a passionless life selflessly devoted to family, or a passionate life as a lonely freak. This book is about calming the demons that pursue women who seek their own way, and about the triumphant superiority of feminine intuition.

Takiko Odaka is the 21-year-old daughter of working-class parents who gets pregnant during a brief, meaningless affair. “Maeda’s desire must be released with no resistance,” she thinks about the government clerk who is her son’s unknowing father. “Though she couldn’t really have said why, Takiko responded to a man’s desire with sympathy. She could think of it only as pitiful and thus not for her to violate.”

Without being able to say why, Takiko decides to bear and keep her child in spite of the censure of her community and the fury of her parents. “Takiko had no ‘idea’ in mind beyond thinking: ‘Ah, so I’m going to have a baby. I’ve looked after my little brother, I like children, it might not be such a bad thing after all.’ She had no special hopes for her own future.” Her mother responds to Takiko’s decision by urging her to abort the baby or at least give it up for adoption; she threatens and rants. Her father, always violent, continues to beat her up.

The baby is born, and Takiko instinctively comes to adore him, without being able to say why. Her life unfolds like a dream. After a miserable stint selling cosmetics door to door, Takiko gets a quirky and pleasant job at an eccentric nursery called Misawa Gardens. Misawa provides indoor plants to many offices in the city, and Takiko and her partner spend the day replacing houseplants with new ones and carting the faded ones back to Misawa for rejuvenation.

Because Takiko fails at her cosmetics job she cannot afford private day-care. She puts her son Akira in a public center, which turns out to be better. Because she is a failure at sales, she gets the job at Misawa, which makes her days sunlit and green. Because she visits and sleeps with a former classmate, she finds a good friend.

Her love for Akira leads her into rich and thrilling conversation with Kambayashi, an older fellow-worker who has a retarded son. Kambayashi is married, but without really being able to say why, Takiko falls in love with him. Their growing closeness is so complete and so natural that she doesn’t know what’s happening. Tsushima eloquently describes the way passion for a man can broaden the world’s possibilities, and narrow the world to the sound of one voice.

The book begins in the hospital with Akira’s birth and ends in the hospital with his operation for a small hernia. Takiko has been afraid of the operation, but it is successful and Akira regains his strength and spirits immediately. Kambayashi, who has been struggling with his own feelings, visits her in the hospital and talks about their future.

In her vague, womanly way with the irrational certainty that drives her parents crazy, Takiko moves through a world of danger and despair, led by her intuition to a situation of beauty and promise. Tsushima’s prose, a collage of event and dialogue, is studded with glorious images from Takiko’s mind, images of clear and smoky quartz, images of a northern ice-bound landscape she has never seen, images of mountains and of a girl running in the mountains, a girl who sometimes is trapped and who sometimes seems to be flying.

“The world below is clearly visible from the mountain slope, stretching away beyond the rustling vine leaves. All too clearly and minutely visible,” Takiko thinks as she gazes from the hospital window. “The world where people live. Countless grains of light glitter as if every surface had been sprinkled with quartz dust. There are houses, roads, adults, children down there. They look like toys but they aren’t toys at all. A world that appears even more distant than the blue peaks floating on the skyline. But it is this world that she wants more than anything to watch. . . .”

In realigning the connection of Takiko to the world, Tsushima has written a novel with the grace of a woman and the moral force of humanity.