Bobby's Girl: A Novel by Rochelle Ratner

Publishers Weekly

The troubled, unnamed heroine in this short, first novel by poet Ratner often lives in a fantasy world populated by singers such as Fabian, Bobby Rydell and Annette Funicello (the story takes place in the '50s and '60s). As for the character's real life, school is boring, her parents are by turn overly solicitous or oblivious to her suffering, and she is convinced that her schoolmates make fun of her. It is only when confronted with an impending hospitalization that the heroine begins to grapple with her outside world, a process that coincides with the collapse of key parts of her fantasies. By the end of this evocative novel, the protagonist is on the road to recovery. (October)

Library Journal

Clearasil, the cha-cha, fan magazines, a ``living-room/dining-room combination,'' and other frivolous trappings of the 1950s and 1960s are part of the oppressive setting that forces a shy young girl in Atlantic City to pace the floors and retreat into an imaginary life where she belongs to Bobby Rydell and where other teen idols like Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon provide release from the vacuous nightmare that is her real world. Despite accordion lessons, shrink sessions, and other pathetic gestures of well-meaning relatives, ``Bobby's Girl,'' at age 21, must finally engineer her own escape to adulthood while fantasizing in a dentist's chair in New York City. Though at times sketchy, this rendering of a painful adolescence effectively underscores the gravity of youth's seemingly transitory traumas.Leonard Kniffel, Detroit P.L.

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