BOOK REVIEW / Fiction : 6 Women, 180 Years and One Dull Story : THE GIRLS <i> by Elaine Kagan</i> ; Alfred A. Knopf; $23, 307 pages

Unless you’re a speed reader, “The Girls” is a weekend in a locked room with six middle-aged women from Kansas City reliving their golden high school years and the three decades that followed.

Altogether, that makes a grand total of 180 years of memories, mostly of Pete Chickery, the super-neat guy with whom they were all in love, simultaneously, separately and continually. When you add Pete’s recollections, you’ve got 210 years, but it seems like a millennium.

The story begins with a literal bang--Pete’s wife, Jessie, shoots him for serial adultery--and goes backward and downward from there. The “girls” have reassembled in K.C. for Pete’s funeral, an event they anticipate with intense emotions.

Early in the novel, the ditziest of the six narrators describes the bathing suits they had in the glorious summer of 1960, the last time all of them were truly happy. Frances’ suit was lime green with skinny straps and a ruffled skirt, Ellen’s was a white Jantzen, and Jessie’s was black--no doubt symbolizing a future in which she’d kill her husband.

If only the girls had kept those suits, it would be easier to tell them apart now. At least three of them would be color-coded. As it is, they’re virtually indistinguishable as they reminisce about the past and muse about the present.

Despite the names identifying their individual sections, they meld into one flat Midwestern voice reciting banalities. There are no signposts whatever--no news of the world, no mention of books, movies, or even TV shows that might help the reader place the events in time and space. The description of Kansas City is so sketchy that the novel could just as easily be taking place in Vladivostok, or anywhere at all where the summers are humid, the winters are cold, and there’s a chance of tornadoes--although the tornado never happens. You’re almost sorry, because it could have been a dramatic event, and a 300-page book needs more than one of those. The funeral can’t do it all.

Here’s Ellen, in 1994, almost 50: “I never wanted to do anything. I just wanted to stay right here and marry Tom and have his babies and get a house on the Kansas side and fix it up real cute and go to the club and play cards and read recipe books and make interesting things, you know.” And her dream came true. Did it ever.

Frances left K.C. and went to New York, where she became an actress, playing a few bits in television serials. She married George, from whom she’s divorced. George drives a Mercedes, but that’s virtually all we ever learn about him.

Anne went to school in Texas. She married Joe but couldn’t have children, and after they split up, she moved to California, where she has an unidentified job with IBM. I would have liked to know more about that, if only because it’s the only job mentioned--if you don’t count Billy, who’s a fireman married to Tee, or Pete himself, a traveling salesman in down-market blouses.

Tee has two characteristics that set her apart from the rest. She’s profane and she suffered from acute postpartum depression.

Anita is Pete Chickery’s sister, a prude who tries to make up for the fact that her brother is a lecher. She was in love with Neil in high school but she married Leonard. All we know about Leonard is that he noticed immediately how much Anita disliked her brother. That’s probably enough. Husbands get a minimum of attention here.

Jessie is the shooter. In high school, she was the one the others envied. Her parents opposed her marriage to Pete, and she should have listened.

With the exception of Anita and one other, all the “girls” slept with Pete at one time or another. As they natter on, it becomes ever more obvious that sleeping with Pete was the pivotal event in their lives. They all feel guilty about it, because of course he was either already married to Jessie or about to be.

Was Pete an utter rat? No, because sleeping with him was not only fun, but incredibly therapeutic; a cure for depression, low self-esteem, suicidal tendencies, even cancer. The qualities that made Pete so irresistible were his blue eyes and his Southern accent, although you wouldn’t think that either would be so rare in Missouri.

He seems to have committed most of his adulteries for altruistic reasons, although of course Jessie doesn’t know that. Perhaps if she did, she wouldn’t have shot him, but you never know.