Alan's response to a review of "Lenin - The Novel"

To the Editor (New York Times):

Any British author, not to mention the author of a first novel, must be gratified to get the space you gave ''Lenin: The Novel'' in your issue of Oct. 16 (1988), even though your reviewer, Ellendea Proffer, runs to impressive length to describe my fiction as a cartoon of fact.

Owing to our postal strike, which lingered long in the Welsh mountains, and some problems with Royal Mail muleteers, it is probably rather too late to enter into any dispute over the details. So I will forgo pointing out that, contrary to her assertion, there are many sources testifying to Lenin's appalling clothes and vulgar abuse - you have only to look at Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's deeply researched ''Lenin in Zurich.''

It scarcely needs any rebuttal to squash your reviewer's shocked cry - ''Mr. Brien actually seems to admire this historical bloodthirstiness'' - by pointing out that nowhere does ''Mr. Brien'' express any opinions. My book is a work of imagination, the fictional diary of a real person. Naturally, the first-person narrator tends to believe that what he is doing is right. What would your reviewer expect - ''Dear Diary: I am a blood-soaked monster, on a throne of skulls''?

ALAN BRIEN Corwen, Wales