A Vacuous Volume From Barbieri: Celebrity - And O.J.'S Backside

----------------------------------------------------------------- "The Other Woman: My Years With O.J. Simpson" by Paula Barbieri Little, Brown and Company, $23.95 -----------------------------------------------------------------

If you're curious about the changing dimensions of O.J. Simpson's derriere, this is the book for you.

But if you're seeking fresh insight on whether the ex-football star could have committed murder, better look elsewhere.

Barbieri, once a top model and now known chiefly as Simpson's former girlfriend, had a rare vantage point on the events surrounding The Trial of the Century: She was his lover during the days leading up to that infamous Bronco chase, and spent countless hours on the phone with him while he was in jail.

But her book, subtitled "A Story of Love, Trust and Betrayal," is less a saga of the Simpson case than it is the story of a troubled woman's struggle to break away from an unhealthy relationship.

It's also a sometimes-sleazy expose of the celebrity lifestyle, with enough name-dropping - from Michael Bolton to George Hamilton to Donald Trump - to keep the tabloids buzzing for weeks.

And though Barbieri makes much of her new status as a born-again Christian, she clearly understands that primness does not a bestseller make.

"As O.J. methodically undressed," she writes of their first romantic encounter, "I marveled at his body. I'd never seen such a sculpted torso. His abdominal muscles looked carved from granite; his bottom was high and round. But those skinny legs seemed so out of place. . . ."

Many months later, while visiting Simpson in jail, they fretted together over the changes in his body: "His once-sturdy physique had been whittled away until his prison jumpsuit sagged off his collarbones. `I'm even losing my bottom,' he'd say sadly. That was a heavy hit at O.J.'s self-image; he'd been proud of his great derriere."

During the course of the trial, Barbieri became so wrapped up with Simpson's life that she neglected her own. Her thousand-dollar modeling bookings evaporated, and soon her savings did, too. Her low point came in the summer of 1996, when she bounced a check for $5.38.

"Predictably," she writes, "a photo of the check showed up in the tabloids."

The tabloids also had a role in her final breakup with Simpson, shortly after his 1995 acquittal by the criminal-trial jury. Throughout the course of their three-year, on-and-off relationship, the couple had had many fights, often over his apparent inability to tell the truth. The final straw, she says, came when he lied to her about his intent to sell their "reunion" photos to the Star magazine.

But oddly, she still refuses to take a stand on whether she thinks he's being honest when he says he did not kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Now and then, she raises a small voice of doubt. When discussing the infamous trial incident when Simpson was asked to try on the murder gloves, she notes that she was relieved by his apparent struggle to make them fit. But then she asks herself, "had anyone else noticed how easily he'd pulled them off?"

Unfortunately, such moments of questioning come all too infrequently in this vacuous book.