BOOK REVIEW : Coming-of-Age Novel Lacks Fresh Viewpoint : PLAIN JANE, <i> by Eve Horowitz,</i> Random House, $20; 260 pages

Too mature for Seventeen but not yet quite ready for Cosmo, Jane Singer is marking time until the pieces of her life drop into place. Relatively speaking, her rebellion seems mild.

Instead of automatically going off to college after graduating as valedictorian, she’s working as a secretary to a group of psychiatrists, one of whom had treated her for adolescent depression. Her romance with Eddie, her high school beau, is on automatic pilot; gaining momentum but losing altitude.

She defines herself as a “technical virgin,” an expression that sounds somewhat anachronistic, but Jane hasn’t quite come to terms with the 1990s. Her favorite novel is still “Catcher in the Rye,” and she’s reading it for the ninth time, a fact that may account for certain correspondences between her prose style and Holden Caulfield’s. Though they share a knack for blunt expression and a sharp eye for pretentiousness, they haven’t much else in common except attitude.

Jane’s sister Caroline has suddenly come to terms with absolutely everything. Notoriously wild in high school and college, she’s reinvented herself as virtue incarnate, and is about to marry an Orthodox Jewish doctor and move to New York--a 180-degree turn from her assimilated Cleveland family and her own florid past. Though so radical a solution to her own confusion doesn’t appeal to Jane, her sister’s newly acquired tranquillity both fascinates and appalls her.

While her observations on Caroline’s altered persona are wryly amusing, the fiance who produced this miracle remains a cipher. Jonathan is described as “mature, responsible, cute, funny and interesting,” but given no opportunity to display any of these qualities. Instead, we learn a lot about his family--a mother, father and sister who absorb Caroline like an amoeba ingesting a paramecium, but make no secret of their disdain for the rest of the Singer clan.

In addition to the girls Jane and Caroline, there is also Willy Singer, their teen-age brother. Willy suffers from an ill-defined psychological disorder that interferes with his ability to tell the truth or keep up with his classmates. Jane believes herself responsible for his affliction, alluding to her guilt throughout the book but keeping the reader is suspense. When the terrible truth is finally revealed, we’re underwhelmed, but then, Jane takes everything seriously. Her sister may have the rituals down pat, but Jane has a monopoly on the guilt.

By the end of the book, Jane has seen beneath her father’s charming facade to the petty tyrant beneath, and learned a new respect for her mother’s repressed talents. She’s overcome her reluctance to apply to college, and found the gumption to end her relationship with Eddie. Even the enigma of Caroline’s conversion has begun to seem comprehensible in the light of all she’s discovered.

Still, despite the narrator’s brisk prose, often trenchant comments, and faithful adherence to the best of models, “Plain Jane” is mining an exhausted vein. This year, simply being young, female, Midwestern and Jewish isn’t quite enough to revive it.