Newspaper Article

Quotes: BOOK REVIEW THE STORY OF A

Abby Frucht. Abby Frucht's new novel, "Polly's Ghost," will be published in January

1999

Overview

Marcy Bunkleman is 15 years old when 41-year-old Robert, husband of her mother's best - and apparently only - friend, invites her to begin \"an adventure.\" Marcy understands that Robert's invitation is sexual. They begin an affair that lasts a year, during which Marcy, a high school track star, must conceal her daily visits to the lakeview apartment that Robert had rented for their encounters. \"When you go into a room with one other person and lock the door behind you, you are momentarily free of every principle by which people ordinarily speak and act with each other ... You may legislate as you wish,\" declares Marcy from a distance of decades, her tone deliberately subdued as if in deference to the curious detachment she used to feel around Robert, whose inappropriate age she \"hadn't paid much attention to\" until she ended the affair and began dating a boy at school. Then, Robert's age became associated, in the young girl's mind, with a sadness so inescapable that much of her ongoing story, relating her ascent into and beyond middle age, involves her attempts to break free of it.

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