SOURCE: "Staking Out Her Territory," in New York Times Book Review, November 9, 1980, p. 55.

In the following review, Tyler praises Fox's realistic handling of teenage problems in A Place Apart.

I know a teen-age girl who seems to spend most of her library time opening books, reading their end flaps and slamming them shut. "Fourteen-year-old Mary and her alcoholic mother…." Slam. "When fifteen-year-old Laura learns she's pregnant…." Slam. What she wants, she says, is a book about somebody ordinary. It could be somebody with a problem, if necessary, but does the problem have to be the most important part of the book?

The 13-year-old narrator of A Place Apart has several problems. Her father has died, she and her mother have moved to an unfamiliar town, and the boy who befriends her often confuses and troubles her. But the center of the novel is Victoria herself, not her problems...