A Place Apart

When her father dies, 13-year-old Victoria Finch and her mother move to New Oxford, Massachusetts, where she becomes friends with two classmates, Elizabeth Marx--who is troubled by her mental mother--and Hugh Todd--a snobby thespian who encourages her to write a school play, even though she doesn't particularly like to write. While "A Place Apart" does touch on the loss of Victoria's father--as well as the idea of her mother marrying again (which she isn't too thrilled about)--it's Victoria's friendship with Hugh that has the greater impact on her. She realizes he's not the person she thought he was, though most readers can guess this beforehand.At first, the small print and long chapters in "A Place Apart" gave me the false impression this was going to be a slow and tedious story, but I was thankfully proven wrong. This is a wonderful, charming book and worth reading if you like well written coming-of-age stories.

A Place Apart written by Paula Fox is a book that I wouldrecommend to all readers. It's a great story that captures theattention of any reader interested in learning about life. The plot not only illustrates the challenges we face in life, but it helps us realize that life is a challenge. This story deals with many universal human concerns that young adult readers can fully indentify with. Like personal indentity, family, friendship, love and betrayal. One example is loneliness, the main character Victoria, experiences the loss of her father therefore looses the desire to live. As the story goes on another male character comes to play an important role in her life. Hugh, teaches her the importance of life and that life is an advanture worth living. They develop a friendship because Hugh as well as Victoria has lost his father. Hugh then becomes Victoria's role model. Victoria sees him with such admiration that she becomes deeply in love with him. Since Hugh is aware of what Victoria feels for him, he takes advantage of what she offers him. This is a great book that I am sure young readers will enjoy. The language is easy to understand and the book never looses it's excitment. Once you start reading it you cannot put it down!