Charades

By R.Z. Sheppard

FOREIGN AFFAIRS by Alison Lurie

Random House; 291 pages; $15.95

In his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde warned that those who would "go beneath the surface do so at their peril." This is precisely the risk novelists take, though the better ones know that the obvious can hold as much truth as the hidden. Alison Lurie is among the better ones. She has deftly drawn the relationship between outward style and inward character in such novels as Imaginary Friends and Real People, and in her social history The Language of Clothes.

Foreign Affairs, Lurie's seventh book of fiction, explores the vocabularies of love and friendship. It is a tale of two citizens (U.S.) played out in an alien though strangely familiar land (U.K.). Virginia Miner, "54 years old, small, plain, and unmarried -- the sort of person that no one ever notices," has returned to London to research children's rhymes. Fred Turner, 28 and gorgeous, is in town to polish off a book on 18th century Poet-Playwright John Gay.

Readers expecting a sizzling exploitation of the older-woman-younger-man vogue should switch back to Dynasty.

Fred and "Vinnie" are related by English department only; both teach at a university in upstate New York. Fred's feminist wife Ruth has decided to stay in America.

She is a photographer whose work experiments with arty juxtapositions of images such as mushrooms next to an erect penis.

The Turners' is a troubled marriage.

Vinnie once had a husband but has adjusted to living alone. A frequent companion is an imaginary mutt that she conjures up in glum moments. This shaggy symbol of self-pity recently appeared after a critic dismissed her work with the question, "Do we really need a scholarly study of playground doggerel?" The author of the offending article, L.D. Zimmern, turns out to be the father of Fred's estranged wife. The coincidence seems to have been extended as an ironic gratuity signaling solemn readers that Foreign Affairs is, despite pathos, sudden death and madness, an adroitly bundled comedy of hits and errors.

The biggest mistake is Fred's. He falls for Lady Rosemary Radley, a blond and creamy television actress whose aristocratic public manner contrasts drastically with Lady R. the private shrew and slob.

She is also an alarming example of what can happen when a shaky personality forfeits her identity to celebrity. Fred is, on the other hand, a passive narcissist. He takes his attractiveness for granted, breaks hearts out of thoughtlessness rather than malice, and has developed no antibodies against lovesickness. When Rosemary eventually boots him out of her bed, about all the sympathy one can muster is a facetious "Poor baby."

Vinnie has better luck. Despite a preference for slim, elegant men, she be friends a retired engineer from Tulsa who tours London in Western boots, broad brim hat and plastic raincoat. The cow boy and the kiddie-lit professor make an odd couple, but they have much to offer each other. She helps him research his ancestry; he proves to be an intelligent observer and, in due course, a sensitive lover.

Fred and Vinnie are two contrasting academics, neither at home in aggressively candid America nor comfortable with the manners and morals of their London friends. People are not always what they seem to be, an obvious point but one often blunted by natural urges to confuse image with substance. Fred's good looks raise false expectations: "The noble exterior is assumed to clothe a mind and soul equally great." Beautiful Lady Rosemary harbors a desire to be ugly, and plain Vinnie discovers a pleasant truth about her middle age: "Her features have not taken on the injured, strained expression of the former beauty, nor does she paint and decorate or simper and coo in a desperate attempt to arouse the male interest she feels to be her due."

The novel offers many astute comments on the marriage of illusion and reality. For example, a description of charades, English style: "Though some trouble is taken to confuse the issue and make guessing harder, the game mainly seems to be an excuse for dressing up and behaving in ways that would otherwise be considered silly or shocking. It thus combines verbal ingenuity, in-group loyalty and cooperation, love of elaborate public performance, and private childishness."

In her sophisticated parlor game, Alison Lurie acts out her mystery words, --foreign affairs," brilliantly.