Seven Days and Seven Sins. (Fiction).(Book Review)(Brief Article)

PAMELA DITCHOFF. Crown/Shaye Areheart, $23 (256p) ISBN 0-609-60979-3

Using the biblical sins and the days of the week as a framework, this collection of interlocked stories about a smalltown neighborhood is faintly surreal and startlingly honest, casting the outward stability of its subjects' lives into doubt. The stories are presented by precocious 12-year-old Angela, who watches her Lantern Hill Lane neighbors with X-ray eyes. She isn't the only one peering through windows. In "Lust," George, a paleontologist, spies on hopelessly obese Opal with binoculars as he cares for his father, who is slowly losing his mind. In "Saturday's Child Works Hard for a Living," one …