LIFE WITH MY SISTER MADONNA.

Christopher Ciccone and Wendy Leigh. Simon Spotlight Entertainment. 342 pages. $26.

Life With My Sister Madonna, Christopher Ciccone's whiny memoir about growing up in the shadow of his world-famous, world-class neurotic older sister, accomplishes something nothing else written about the singer has managed to do: It makes you feel a little sorry for her.

Anyone who has a book written about her by a little brother or sister is going to be in for it: There may be no rivalry more bitter or capricious than the one between siblings. But when you are the most famous female performer in the world, and your hostile biographer feels he hasn't been compensated for the role he played in your career, the venom is going to be particularly toxic.

So it goes with Ciccone, who served as a backup dancer, personal dresser, confidante and wingman for Madonna at the start of her meteoric rise, directed her highly successful Girlie Show tour in 1993, designed and decorated several of her homes and yet still feels like he's owed more than a little something. After all, as he constantly reminds the reader, she's filthy rich, and he's not.

Ciccone likes to paint himself as Madonna's long-suffering foot-soldier, rushing to her side whenever beckoned but usually unable to extract even a shred of reciprocation. When, in the early 1990s, he calls Madonna to tell her he's broken up with his partner of 10 years, he confesses, ``We rarely talk about our feelings in our family, so I know better than to expect her to offer me her shoulder to cry on; still, I secretly hope that she will care enough about me to be slightly sympathetic.''

Madonna's quick response to the sad news: ' `Don't worry, I never liked him anyway.' No suggestion that I come over for breakfast or sit with her on the plane so we can talk. Nothing. Ten years of my life, gone.''

Ciccone seems perfectly oblivious to his enormous self-pity and the fact that it's hard to feel sympathy for a man whose sister won't sit with him ''on the plane'' to chat. Most of the book is like that: a man gazing at his big sister with admiration and resentment, but mostly the latter.

After Madonna sticks Ciccone with a $65,000 bill for paintings to decorate her Coconut Grove house she impulsively decides she doesn't want, he is flabbergasted. ''Because I was her brother and because I was honest, no matter how famous she was, no matter how much money I was offered for my story, I never did interviews about her, never talked to people about her,'' he writes. But her latest callous treatment changes something. ``By the time I finally manage to sell the pictures and recoup my money, my feelings for her have undergone a radical shift.''

This may be Ciccone's justification for writing a book that betrays the most important and influential relationship in his life, but it doesn't keep Life With My Sister Madonna from reeking of payback. There are no major revelations about the singer, who never has kept much about her life or psyche private. But there are, of course, lots of fun tidbits, such as Madonna's reaction to the debacle that was Shanghai Surprise, the 1986 film in which she co-starred with then-husband Sean Penn (' `It's all Sean's fault,' she tells me, in a voice that brooks no contradiction''); or that Cher visited with Madonna as she prepared to perform Like a Virgin at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, watching her with unusual intensity (``She seems lonely, and I think it strange that she is just sitting there staring at Madonna while she is getting dressed'').

Ciccone, like Madonna, also spent considerable time in Miami, and the city makes guest appearances throughout, whether the occasion is Ciccone's first encounter with a 14-year-old Esteban Cortazar (''I sense a fire burning in him -- an intensity that reminds me of the young Madonna''), who has gone on to a distinguished career in the fashion industry; ringing in the new year on Dec. 31, 1999, at Casa Casuarina and the Bar Room on South Beach, where Madonna grabs Gwyneth Paltrow and -- gasp! -- ``kisses her full on the mouth''; or befriending Kate Moss at Liquid in 1995, even though his big sister disapproves of her drug use (although she dabbled in Ecstasy and marijuana in her youth, Ciccone makes clear Madonna has zero tolerance for drugs).

In the latter portions of the book, Ciccone delves into Madonna's marriage to Guy Ritchie and her embracement of Kabbalah, two things that drive a definitive wedge between brother and sister. Although he ends things on a reconciliatory note (``Even though our contact is minimal these days, any bitterness I had once felt for my sister has long since evaporated''), it's hard to imagine the singer will ever trust him again the way she once did, or even speak to him. But the book should sell well and earn Ciccone a nice paycheck. Which, in the end, is ultimately what Life With My Sister Madonna is really about.

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