Polly

October 9, 2006
The boy-crazy heroine of Bryant's debut novel, Polly Clarke, is in junior high, lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C., hangs out at the roller rink and dreams of being on the drill team. But alienated by her home life—her parents are divorced, her father's an alcoholic and her stepfather's unloving—and by conformist pressures at school, she quits the drill team, trades her pastel sweaters for Megadeth T-shirts and takes up smoking. She becomes a devotee of the D.C. hardcore punk scene and has a string of dressed-in-black boyfriends, some sweet, some sleazy, some criminal. As she drinks and smokes her way through high school, she experiments with drugs, and during her first year in college is raped by an acquaintance while drunk. Afterward, she re-examines her self-destructive behavior and finds redemption in art, which becomes her college major. Though instructive and sometimes funny to anyone who remembers the degradations of high school, Bryant's novel, with its threadbare prose and angsty teenage narrator, reads like young adult fiction.

January 1, 2007
In this debut novel, the title character is a typical teenager growing up in the Washington, DC, suburbs during the 1980s. After failing at drill team in junior high, Polly suffers the teasing of her fellow students, which sets her firmly in the "out" crowd during high school. She falls in with fellow fans of the "hardcore" music scene popular in DC at the time and eventually attends Virginia Tech. Polly doesn't have many interests, except for boys and hardcore music, and why she likes these isn't adequately conveyed. There are enough plot pointsquitting the drill team, discovering hardcore, losing her virginity, dealing with her mother's miscarriage, and reuniting with her estranged, alcoholic fatherbut it's hard to get inside Polly's head to feel her reaction to these events. She's a thinly written character and doesn't develop much over the course of the story. Also note: there's enough sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll to make this a risky choice for many YA collections.Amy Watts, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens

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