BOOK REVIEW : Links Lost to Generations of Lovers : THEO AND MATILDA <i> By Rachel Billington</i> ; HarperCollins, $21.95, 368 pages

Rachel Billington, of the illustrious British family the Longfords, has produced her 10th novel. “Theo and Matilda” is an ambitious project: a twist on the multigenerational saga, linking the families not by actual bloodlines but by their association with a place.

The book concerns five generations of lovers, all named Theo and Matilda. The first pair we meet are a young, modern British couple. Within pages, we are swept back to England, circa 770, where Theo, a would-be monk, and Matilda, a soon-to-be nun, build a monastery together.

The second couple live on the same site in 1540 and this time are a monk and a lady of the manor. After various misadventures with brigands and serfs, they manage to burn down the manor house.

A stately Victorian home later takes its place and is occupied in 1880 by another namesake couple. After lots of trials and tribulations, (they almost manage to burn the house down), they allow the building to be turned into a lunatic asylum.

Time passes. In 1980, we meet yet another Theo and Matilda, this time two deranged inhabitants of the now thoroughly modern loony bin. One thing leads to another, and the building is torn down, only to be replaced by condominiums, one of which will be occupied by--you guessed it--Theo and Matilda.

Points for trying. But the book is overlong, boring and often just plain silly, and Billington has a florid style and a love of cliche.

Furthermore, Billington has failed to achieve what appears to be her central ambitions in writing this book: To explore romantic love between five couples and draw a link between them, and to examine the nature of romantic passion. The strands between the generations are tenuous, however, and there are no revelations on the theme of divine love.

The women are headstrong, impatient and irritable, usually more effective than their male counterparts. The men are idealistic and energetic but pathetically childish and ineffectual. Everybody is more or less desperate, but we are unmoved by their plights.

The best parts of “Theo and Matilda” are the 20th-Century stories. Here, at last, the author shows a colorful imagination and a pleasing eye for the grotesque.

Amusing black humor finally comes into play in the tale of the manor mistress Matilda, with her brood of seven children and 20 servants. Her Theo, a hopelessly eccentric being with a draping beard and a passion for snakes, deserts his family to travel to the Far East in quest of mambos and pythons. In the process, he invests and loses the family fortune.

The only man in Matilda’s life is the Rev. Oswald Plunkett, who has fallen desperately in love with her. One day, she is confronted by her suitor:

“ ‘I deserve nothing,” he muttered, groveling. ‘You are an angel, a saint. I am a beast, a worm under your feet. . . .’

“ ‘Have you done wrong?’ Matilda asked, almost sternly. ‘Something of which you are ashamed?’

” ’. . . I love you,’ he said, and as he spoke tears began to roll down his cheeks. ‘I love you. . . .’ ”

After more unhappy confessions and rebuffs, Plunkett attempts to commit suicide by breaking into Theo’s python’s cage and goading it to bite him. The snake (which is not venomous) is sitting on a nest of eggs, about to hatch. Matilda retreats, and the vicar is later found covered with writhing, newly hatched baby pythons, attempting to stuff one into his mouth.

Unfortunately, such enjoyable moments are few. Perhaps if Billington had abandoned her aspirations as a historical novelist and confined herself to relatively modern life, her book would have been more satisfying.

Next: Carolyn See reviews “The Matter is Life” by J. California Cooper (Doubleday).