Synopses & Reviews
POLLY is an engaging, edgy and real comingandndash;ofandndash;age novel with a unique and sellable structure andndash;andndash; each chapter focuses on a different guy in her life from 8th grade through her sophomore year in college. Although this may sound like your ordinary chickandndash;lit setandndash;up, it's far from it.
It's the 1980's and Polly is the kind of girl who wears all black, lives in her Doc Martens, and wears concert tandndash;shirts from bands like Bad Brains. She spends her free time going to hardcore rock shows and has her first sexual experience andndash;andndash; with a soonandndash;toandndash;be high school dropout andndash;andndash; while listening to "No Sleep 'til Brooklyn" by the Beastie Boys. But while she might run with a more deviant crowd, she's smart, does well in school and eventually goes to college, where she continues to grow with each relationship. All along her friends and family provide the backdrop to her story as she comes to terms with her alcoholic father and learns to accept her stepfather as someone who does care for her.
From failed pompom girl falling in love at the roller rink to punk rocker to budding art student, Bryant's eye for detail lends insight and humor to Polly's teenage romances, and reminds us all of the relationships we'll never forget...and the ones we wish we could. Bryant has created a perfect narrator in Polly who is both relatable and honest and sure to find a fan club.
Review:
"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"There are enough plot points — quitting the drill team, discovering hardcore, losing her virginity, dealing with her mother's miscarriage, and reuniting with her estranged, alcoholic father — but it's hard to get inside Polly's head to feel her reaction to these events." Library Journal
Review:
"Polly isn't boring, but her romantic angst is — and that's the author's unfortunate focus." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Bryant's teenage protagonist learns some harsh lessons in the suburban-Virginia coming-of-age tale, usually in the hardest possible ways." Washington D.C. City Paper
Synopsis:
This engaging, clever, and original tale chronicles a young woman's growth from adolescence to adulthood through her sometimes passionate, sometimes comic, sometimes heartbreaking romantic relationships.
Synopsis:
If you're looking for Polly Clark, she'll be the girl wearing Doc Martens and a Bad Brains T-shirt at the punk show. She'll be (almost) losing her virginity to a high school dropout, accompanied by the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn." She'll be looking for her artistic soul while trying to solve the mysteries of guys, life, her seriously dysfunctional family . . . and herself.In eight chapters, Polly is shaped by eight relationships in this honest, tender, original, and utterly endearing story of one girl's stumbles and successes in the world of punked-out 1980s suburban romance — the unforgettable debut of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary fiction.
About the Author
A native of suburban Washington, D.C., Amy Bryant now lives in New York City. This is her first novel.
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