Comic Villainy Lurks Among Family Ties : FAMILY MONEY, <i> by Nina Bawden,</i> St. Martin’s Press, $19.95; 250 pages

This funny, vicious, little novel is written not just for women, but for old women of all ages. It’s a fine book but a lot of people in the reading world aren’t going to like it. A question of villainy, of “otherness” is continuously, puzzlingly present. Ernest Hemingway was fond of madly heterosexual white males and dismissed wimpy guys or women who didn’t care about grace under pressure. Nina Bawden, in her turn, blithely dehumanizes all men, young women, and most children.

Who’s left as heroic in this narrative, then, is Fanny Pye, a 60-year-old widow in a charming precinct of London who is still mourning the recent death of her husband, but not very much. As the novel opens, Fanny has just seen “A Fish Called Wanda” and is dining alone at a favorite restaurant, where she is a beloved regular. Walking home, she witnesses a kind of car accident/mugging of a very tiresome customer from back at the restaurant. When she comes forward unwillingly to help the victim, she herself is mugged, knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital. Her troubles begin.

Fanny has had some of her memory bashed right out of her, and her family--an overbearing older sister, and two of the most unattractive grown children in literary history--begin to badger her in every possible way. Overnight, Fanny is designated an “old lady,” possibly senile, unable to take care of herself, and so forth and so on.

Her son, Harry, stuck in a dull job and pondering possible adultery, becomes fearful that his mother is stuck in weird sexual fantasies: She believes that attractive men are following her. He thinks she may become an embarrassment to him, and to the larger world. Fanny’s daughter, Isabel, pregnant with her fourth child, is far more simple and venal in her concerns: She covets her mother’s house--a five-story charming Georgian dwelling that opens onto a picturesque canal, where seedy Bohemians carry on a boisterous, carefree life on houseboats. Isabel wants that Georgian dwelling. Everyone wants it, and it suits everyone’s purpose to make Fanny out to be an invalid.

Meanwhile, the accident victim dies. Fanny has been witness to a murder, and it is a fairly sure bet that the murderer lives on a boat just across the canal from her house. The young man in question begins stalking her. (Thus, “Family Money” turns out to be half thriller and half 19th-Century novel of manners.)

But covering both parts of this plot is a thin resilient net of “family” and what it means to be stuck in one. All these characters bob like corks, half in, half out of water. They communicate with each other consciously and unconsciously. Fanny and her son love each other. Fanny and her daughter really don’t, and yet these affections or their lack must always be accommodated to the larger, far more complex demands of extended family life.

Gradually, even as Fanny recedes into deep gloom, it becomes clear that she was always a great beauty and a bit of an adulteress herself. That although she’s terrified of the man who is following her, she herself has the guts of a burglar. And finally, that there are not one but probably two wonderful men still madly in love with her.

The question here is: Where’s the audience for all this? Yes, it’s true that women buy more than half the novels in this country. And it’s true that some women--in vague theory at least--will admit to having had a checkered and colorful past. But very few females will ever admit to having contempt for their children--or to put it another way--few will admit that their children are tapping their feet impatiently, eyeing their metaphysical watches, waiting for mom to croak, so that they can get the house. This is bitter truth, if it is the truth, and not many people will be able to swallow it without a grimace.

Next: Bettyane Kevles reviews “Here Am I--Where Are You?: The Behavior of the Greylag Goose” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) by Konrad Lorenz.