BOOK REVIEW : ‘Fat Lady’ Is High in Calories, Plotting : TILL THE FAT LADY SINGS, <i> by Alisa Kwitney,</i> HarperCollins, $19; 256 pages

The scrawny need not read this book. Those on Jenny Craig or Nutri System should shun its pages. Customers of plastic surgeons can save their money on this one.

In fact, I’m not terribly sure who’s going to read this sweet story, because thinness is by now so entwined with high culture that if you have a B.A. degree, you probably work out, stay away from red meat and limit your caloric intake to (no more than) 1,200 calories a day.

But I hope somebody reads this subversive, revolutionary novel, “Till the Fat Lady Sings.” It’s great!

Manya is a quiet, self-effacing freshman at Columbia University. She’s 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 130 pounds, which renders her plump, friendless and invisible.

She binges and purges and broods and waits for something to happen to her. Because she is so quiet, thoughtful, self-effacing, she constitutes a kind of emotional--if not physical--vacuum, and various well-drawn characters rush to fill it.

Manya is befriended by Ophelia, who speaks mostly in Ophelia quotes, is anorexic, suicidal and very fond of cocaine. Ophelia speaks darkly of a Doomsday Coalition Rally and begins to take quiet Manya to hot university parties. Ophelia’s lover and friend, the madly affected Arthur--actually a friendless kid who grew up lonely on a kibbutz--takes Manya to bed and then betrays her.

On the classroom front, Manya is hounded and humiliated by a wonderfully imagined dippy feminist who has changed her name from Emilia Larson to Emilia Larsdatter and made her own father furious.

Larsdatter is treading on thin ice; she’s in love with a notoriously irresponsible lady’s man who shows up one night with a brand-new wife and, over at the university, the dean is giving her dirty looks. In academe, the feminist lot is not a happy one.

Manya works part time at a vintage clothes store for chunky ladies. This boutique is run by Boris, a womanizing Russian emigre who flirts with every female and then frightens himself to death by actually falling in love with Manya, who is only 18 and--remember--130 pounds.

But all this love, sex, romance, discord, complication, plot are as a complex jazz improvisation. Just underneath these dazzling, dithering notes of conflict beat the familiar, grounding chord changes of--what people eat.

“Pasta, served al dente, with a creamy tomato sauce and steamed vegetables; a light blush wine; a crisp Caesar salad with anchovies gleaming in oil. . . .”

Or “Chinese sesame noodles, fried dumplings, Szechuan beef, Extra-Delirious Chicken with Garlic; Tsingtao beer; appetizers eaten, main dishes all but ignored. . . .” And a final meal in quick juxtaposition: “pepperoni pizzas, vodka martinis, chocolate Yodels. . . .”

All these meals serve to pair lovers off and separate them, because this is an old-fashioned novel in terms of plot--full of 18th-Century devices--and who-loves-whom is a strong consideration.

But the primary thrust here is a treatise on food, why we have ruined one of our main forms of pleasure by torturing ourselves so continuously about its use. Food is food. Stop being so mean-spirited and crazy about it. Life is hard enough without this gratuitous bullying.

(This, I believe, is author Alisa Kwitney’s overriding theme.)

*

The day for the Doomsday Coalition Rally finally arrives. All of the characters--give or take a few--show up, but a far more revolutionary demonstration takes place, which guarantees a happy ending for all.

(I hate to think why this book was assigned to me for review, but on second thought, I don’t care too much. I’m looking at lunch coming up: Chinese chicken salad with a nice glass of Chardonnay.)