by JULIET WATERS

Winner of the National Book Award makes it hard not to think of that other boastful title, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. While Jincy Willett's long awaited first novel shares one thing with Dave Eggers' autobiography - they're both satires of writers and literature - that's about it.

No prolific hipster, Willett hasn't published anything since a 1987 short story collection, Jenny and the Jaws of LIfe. And while Eggers' book may arguably have been heartbreaking etc., one actually hopes for a better fate for Willett than to win the National Book Award. "You remember," says narrator and librarian Dorcas Mathers, "Handleman's Jest, Parameters & Palimpsests, The Holocaust Imbroglio," all past NBA winners, "we sell these babies for 50 cents apiece, or try to, seven years after they come out. We sell them because no one has checked them out for four years."

Fortunately, Jenny and the Jaws of Life hasn't fallen into such obscurity. Recently reissued, David Sedaris wrote the introduction and called it "the funniest collection of stories I've ever read." Willett's latest book has received similar praise. Augusten Burroughs calls it "the funniest novel I have read, possibly ever. Brilliant, totally original, and worthy of its title. I promise you will laugh constantly and to the point of stomach damage." Whatever its fate, clearly she's a satirist's satirist.

The novel opens in mid-August, 1983. While a hurricane rages outside, Dorcas is holed up in her library with a bottle of scotch. She has decided it's time to read a book she's been avoiding, the biography of her twin sister Abigail, In the Driver's Seat: The Abigail Mathers Story. Her twin has become a feminist icon ever since backing over her abusive husband with a car. Advance reviews have been appropriately glowing from peers like Marj Wysocki, author of Black Eye, and Victoria Fracas, author of Rape, Rape, Rape.

The book is one hilarious old-school-feminist cliché with Abigail as a perennial victim: not validated sufficiently by her father, gang raped by the high school football team and relentlessly abused by her husband. Dorcas's memory of her sister, however, is a little different. For as long as she can remember, Abigail has been a chronically bawdy, attention-seeking slut. Dorcas, a 37-year-old spinster by choice, is the epitome of self-sufficiency and self-control. Abigail, however, is all appetite. Had their father validated Abigail's sexuality, Dorcas believes, he would have ended up in prison. Also, it's her memory that Abigail returned home from her night with the football team "hair filthy, reeking of dried beer, her body rank and strange" announcing: "Dorcas… It's wonderful… You can make them do anything!"

Abigail's husband, Conrad Lowe, however, is quite possibly the most reptilian character ever created in literature. A writer, he is best known for his tell-all biography of his mother, a former Hollywood movie star. His picture of her as an evil soulless nymphomaniac who psychologically tortured her son is corroborated by many who knew her. Conrad does seem to have learned an awful lot from her though.

Lowe arrives in town to visit his college roommate, the poet Guy DeVilbiss, himself a National Book Award winner. An ardent feminist, Guy makes "Kate Millet look like Barbara Cartland" and writes poetry like "Werewolf," a 12-stanza ode to his wife's menstrual cycle. Lowe stays, however, to seduce Dorcas. The first stage of this project involves marrying her sister. His wedding gift to Abigail, a bathroom scale, is reason enough to kill him.

Does the book live up the expectations of its title and fans? Yes and no. Willett is more a satirist than a novelist, and ultimately this novel is less than the sum of its parts. Still, there are are more funny parts here than probably a decade of award winners, and I'm guessing librarians will be checking this book out for years to come.

Winner of the National Book Award, A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather by Jincy Willett, St. Martin'S Press, HC, 336pp, $33.95