Ingalls Askew : BE MY GUEST <i> By Rachel Ingalls (Turtle Bay Books: $20; 238 pp.)</i>

With her seven earlier works and now in “Be My Guest,” Rachel Ingalls has shown that she is a remarkable literary writer, yet accessible to anyone fond of a rattling good yarn. In her effortless deployment of the thriller, science-fiction and fantasy formats to explore the problems of ordinary people in everyday situations, Ingalls ranks with Graham Greene, Brian Moore, Stephen Dobyns and other great writers of suspense-filled, allegorical tales. Indeed, in England where she has lived since 1964, her best-known work, “Mrs. Caliban,” was cited as one of 20 great postwar American novels. In 1991, she won an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

What’s special about Ingalls’ storytelling is that it can be read on many levels. “Mrs. Caliban” is about a lonely woman who falls in love with a green monster. It is science-fiction, a parable about difference, and a study of a pre-”Feminine Mystique” housewife stuck in a horrible marriage. “The End of Tragedy,” her last collection of stories, offers a “Rocky Horror”-style Gothic weekend, a modern parody of the Frankenstein myth, and a sinister tale of money and murder--all pointing to the lack of connection between men and women, a favorite Ingalls theme.

If there is a flaw in her work, it’s that her stories sometimes seem too plotted, too tightly reined, at the expense of interesting language or character development. One wishes sometimes that she’d loosen up, get off her speeding narrative train and wander around the landscape a bit. Happily, she appears to be doing just that. Though the two new novellas in “Be My Guest” are uneven compared with her earlier work, they show signs that she is trying something new.

In the title story, Sandra is a nice but ordinary young woman, given to reading romantic novels and watching escapist films on TV. She is also stuck with a boring boyfriend, Bert. Asked to take care of her aunt’s house in the suburbs for one weekend, she uses the time alone to think. Just as she is deciding to dump Bert, there is a knock on the front door. Enter Eric, an 11-year-old boy, who tells her that he is really his father, Roy, stuck in his son’s body.

It’s a spell-binding passage, typical of Ingalls’ ability to describe apparently supernatural events while leaving open the possibility that they may have some other, quite ordinary explanation. She almost convinces us that Eric is telling the truth. He’s a creepy little boy, a computer nerd and juvenile antique-collector who once cut open a hamster to see what was inside. Later, as Sandra falls in love with his father, Roy, her lingering uncertainty about Eric adds a continuing note of menace.

The second novella, “Bud and Sis,” is about Alma and Bruce, a brother and sister with the same adoptive parents but different natural parents whom they decide to seek out. In what is clearly meant to be a study of nature vs. nurture, they find what they want, based on their different personalities.

Alma is a pleasant, empathetic girl; Bruce is obsessed and controlling. In a complicating twist, Alma is in love with Bruce, who will see her only as a sister. His hatred toward his real mother for giving him up as a baby leaves him little room to feel anything else. But he is haunted by dreams of Alma, and by the end we suspect that he reciprocates her love.

Driving both novellas is an idea about archetypal stories that keep repeating throughout history, not only in the world of public affairs but in our private lives, and from generation to generation. In “Be My Guest,” through an accumulation of clues about the past, including the violent death of Roy’s first wife, we sense that Sandra may stop loving Roy one day, that more violence will follow--and that Eric will have something to do with it.

What makes these two novellas different from Ingalls’ earlier work is a subtle shift in emphasis from plot to people. In “Bud and Sis,” she does this by moving the story back and forth between Alma and Bruce, interspersing dreams, letters, diary entries and inner thoughts. The problem is, the characters are too one-dimensional to hold our interest. Bruce is too obsessive, Alma too nice. Lacking linguistic color as well, “Bud and Sis” falls flat. “Be My Guest” does better, since Sandra is a more complicated person. Though dreamy and passive like a lot of Ingalls’ female characters, she also is level-headed and good-humored. Her edgy, funny conversations with Eric are the most appealing part of the book.

Though these two novellas lack the punch of more dramatic works like “Mrs. Caliban” or “Theft,” they are certainly no less intelligent. “Bud and Sis” is an interesting if failed experiment in style, “Be My Guest” a whimsical, slightly sinister take on romance novels. With luck, they represent a transition to some future Rachel Ingalls work where ideas, character and imagery will come together in a more explosive fashion than they do here.