BOOK REVIEW / NOVEL : A Country Swept Away by a Baby Who Refuses to Be Born : THE DIVINE CHILD <i> by Pascal Bruckner</i> ; Little, Brown $21.95, 214 pages

What Pascal Bruckner, one of France’s finest contemporary novelists, does in “The Divine Child” is to take us on a Candide-like journey into the world of neonatology--where the best of all possible worlds is experienced vicariously through the embryonic protagonist’s stubborn refusal to be born.

Brucker’s story begins with the pregnancy of a young mother who considers herself the possessor of her embryo, rather than a participant in the mystery of life. Madeleine decides that “she would skip way ahead: instead of moronically waiting until her little shaver was 6 years old to send him to school, she would begin instructing him during the earliest weeks of pregnancy.”

With the help of a jaded gynecologist--”who had no desire for children of his own: too many fertile bellies had cured him of any desire to procreate”--the mother embarks on a program to educate her embryo. Miniature speakers are inserted into the mother’s orifices, and everything from German language tapes to algebra and geometry lessons is piped down to the passive infant.

One night a noise rises through the mother’s body: “More, more,” cries a baby’s voice. Not only is the embryo receptive to learning, but it seems there are two: a boy and a girl--soon named Louis and Celine.

What follows is no mere Gaelic version of “Look Who’s Talking,” but a fierce satire of science gone wild--gorging the embryos on everything from Kant and Einstein to the 30 volumes of the Universal Encyclopedia. In their eighth month together, Louis and Celine ask for newspapers. All their previous knowledge has come from books. Now they begin to learn of wars, suffering and cruelty. A crisis occurs. Unwilling to expose himself to life’s vicissitudes, Louis refuses to leave the womb.

His sister submits to birth--and is immediately struck with amnesia. The prenatal genius is transformed into a gooing infant. Her tragedy strengthens Louis’ resolve to remain inside the protective grotto of his mother’s body. Chided by his mother and her doctor for not coming forth, Louis, who has now read all of history and knows how all life ends, asks: “Do you believe that a single baby would agree to be born if it were exposed to what lay in store for it?”

He ends his intellectual query with a challenge: “I’m not coming out.”

Defiant in his refusal, Louis is finally confronted by the voice of God: “My sole reason for being here is to tell you this: Leave!” “With all due respect,” Louis murmurs, “I’d rather not.”

Having refused the maker of all things, Louis believes himself omnipotent. He embarks on a quest for absolute knowledge. The tiniest computer in the world and a printer to match are secreted inside his mother’s body. With his enlarged brain, Louis is soon absorbing the contents of the world’s great libraries.

Word of his prodigious mind spreads. Acolytes appear. Louis’ mother begins to see her son as a new messiah. Louis becomes known as the Divine Child, “divine because he hasn’t been born.”

In an Oedipal struggle made literal, the long-ignored Oswald attempts to regain his lost domain as husband and father. But he is no match for a son able to give orders to his mother on a miniature telephone from inside her body.

One day Louis glimpses a beautiful young girl in the aperture beyond his mother’s body. But try as he might Louis is not able to realize any emotion greater than longing--for he refuses to leave his bed of solitude.

After failing to taunt Louis from his sanctuary, the girl sees an enlarged photograph of her infant admirer: “a wrinkled freak, a baby Methuselah with prematurely aged mask.” She flees in horror. Experiencing her loss, Louis begins spilling his first tears, and yelling, “I want out!”

Love, the missing ingredient in his microcosm, has called him forth. But Louis will die before he is actually born.

A year later in Naples, Madeleine, sleek and desirable again, is making love with a handsome stranger when a last trace of Louis makes its way toward her heart in a final act of vengeance against the mother who wanted her baby to become rather than simply be.

Poor Louis, his refusal to be born echoes Heine’s savage proclamation: “Sleep is good; death is better--but best of all is never to have been born.” To make such a statement, one first must live--something Louis never did. And Pascal Bruckner brilliantly shows why.