BOOK REVIEW : A Spoof Goes Poof as a <i> Roman a Clef</i> : THE FIRST WIVES CLUB <i> by Olivia Goldsmith</i> ; Poseidon $22; 480 pages

If only “The First Wives Club” were an intentional parody, reviewing it would be a delight.

As a parody, the novel is virtually perfect, crammed with every cliche of the sex-power-money genre. The protagonists are three discarded and justifiably aggrieved ex-wives determined to avenge the suicide of a mutual friend. Cynthia Griffin slashed her wrists after her monstrous husband had subjected her not only to a life of emotional, physical and financial abuse but also to the ultimate humiliation of flaunting an affair with his associate, a woman who makes Lucrezia Borgia look like Florence Nightingale.

Realizing that their own ex-husbands have treated them just as miserably, Annie Paradise, the sweet one; Brenda Cushman, the vulgar one, and Elise Atchison, the gorgeous one, band together to ruin the men who have jettisoned them for “trophy wives”--those young, svelte successors who reap the benefits of the first wives’ years of devotion.

At first, Annie Paradise tends to hang back a bit. Her divorce is not yet final, and she still nurtures the hope that her devastatingly handsome husband might yet return. Her reluctance is overcome when she discovers that in addition to absconding with the sex therapist who was supposed to be repairing their disintegrating marriage, Aaron Paradise has invaded their retarded daughter’s trust fund.

Bored with his exquisite, albeit mature, wife Elise, one of the wealthiest women in the world, Bill Atchison is planning to marry the heiress to one of New York’s oldest fortunes, a self-styled “performance artist” whose main performance is snorting coke.

Brenda Cushman’s ex-husband, Morty the Madman, got his start selling appliances that had, so to speak, fallen off the back of her Mafioso father’s truck, but now that he’s semi-respectable and about to take his company public, he’s replaced fat, foul-mouthed Brenda with a Southern belle who seems indifferent to Morty’s terminal crudeness. A pity, because Morty and Brenda seem to have been a match made in heaven. She’s the only woman in the world who can make an obscene comment about a coffee percolator.

Though a suicide hardly seems sufficient to get these three ill-assorted women together, logic isn’t the long suit here. There are heavy-handed indications that this stale and sordid tale is meant as a roman a clef: uncanny resemblances between the names of characters and those of actual New Yorkers who were the glitterati of the ‘80s, lavish allusions to various sexual peccadilloes clearly designed to titillate the sometime denizens of restaurants now in receivership, evidence that the writer has done extensive research in the gossip columns and tabloids.

The author favors dialect, and, in addition to the egregious use of profanity, she has a Latino society decorator saying things like, “Dees ees dreadful news, principessa. Eef dey are all seek, how weell chou feel de table at chour dinner?”

Listening to Aaron Paradise, the would-be writer-turned-ad man, is a journey to cliche nirvana. “Well, he wasn’t dressed for success. . . . Just another stupid tempest in a teapot. . . . He knew he was expected to bring in the bacon, be the rainmaker, lasso new clients. . . .” And that’s in just one paragraph.

The chairwoman of a committee to raise money for Tourette’s syndrome refers to the beneficiaries as “Those poor people with the ca-ca talk disease.” Counting the house, she adds, “There ain’t a table left.” True, the speaker was a poor working girl from Bayonne, N.J., but this is 1992.

And evil as Bill Atchison is, would a man who ordered dinner jackets custom made in London refer to them as “bespoke by Savile Row’s best”? Wouldn’t he know that the buyer bespeaks, the tailor fits and sells? And if neither he nor the author was aware of the distinction, what about the editor?

I hope “The First Wives Club” is a spoof, though the odds are poor. Even though there’s a chapter called “Uh-Oh in SoHo,” and another, dealing with the takeover of a Japanese corporation, called “Is You Is Maibeibi,” when was the last time a parody sold to the movies, became a major book club selection and ran to almost 500 pages? Not in living memory. TFWC is no joke.

Next: Carolyn See reviews “Lives Without Balance” by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol (Villard) .