SHE'S A BELIEVER

Date: December 7, 1986, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 24, Column 4; Book Review Desk
Byline: BY JILL McCORKLE; Jill McCorkle is the author of the novels ''The Cheer Leader'' and ''July 7th''
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BOBBY'S GIRL By Rochelle Ratner. 116 pp. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press. Paper, $9.95.

THE poet Rochelle Ratner makes her fictional debut with ''Bobby's Girl,'' a short, fast-paced novel that spans the ages 10 to 21 of a girl growing up in Atlantic City, N.J., in the 1960's. When we first meet the unnamed heroine, she is 10 years old and pacing a circle in her parents' living room to the tunes of her fantasy life. Her best friends are Annette Funicello, Shelley Fabares, Frankie Avalon and Fabian; Bobby Rydell is her boyfriend and Dick Clark is the superior father figure to all. Her fantasies are as vivid and colorful as the glossy teen-age-idol photos in her collection of magazines, while reality is dull black and white. She is an only child, middle class and unpopular.
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This contrast is sharply drawn in the beginning as we see her hanging out with kids on ''American Bandstand'' one minute and the next called back to the confinement of the living room where her father's very presence issues disapproval. ''When she was little, she didn't have to hide her games and fantasies. People used to marvel at how creative she was. Her mother used to tell her she'd grow up to be an artist and called her 'my little artist' so often that she cringed when she heard the words.'' What seems initially to be harmless, a child with scenarios of being 16 and popular, proves to be the opposite as the fantasies steadily grow, leaving only a small border of reality.

All action is propelled by her desire to escape her parents. She rejects all that they want for her until ultimately only the fantasies remain untouched, hence the real danger as reality begins to threaten the only aspect of her life that she controls: ''If she could just sing as well as this, maybe her parents would believe in her. She prayed to God they wouldn't hold Bobby [ Rydell ] up as an example of someone who'd done it better. . . . Don't take Bobby's friendship away from her.''

Each chapter is prefaced with the year's Top Forty songs, ranging from ''Johnny Angel'' to ''Honky Tonk Women,'' which seem to supply the scenarios with musical accompaniment. She refuses to listen to the Beatles, a fact as significant as the song titles; reality is changing, the fantasies are not.

In one fantasy, Dick Clark is teasing the vibrant make-believe version of the narrator about the time her record got stuck while she lip-synched ''Learning to Love'' on ''American Bandstand.'' In reality, the record is stuck, the endless spinning and circling of the fantasies cutting deeper and deeper while she loses control. Ms. Ratner does an excellent job of showing this as the heroine steps into reality just often enough to be thrown back into her falsely safe tunnel-vision groove. By the time she approaches the desired age of 16, she has dwindled to a state where she cannot function at all. She sat in the ''kitchen chair and spun like a little girl. She wanted to be a child again. She didn't want to be a woman. God, she didn't want to ever be a woman, didn't want some man she thought was her friend to suddenly turn around and want her body. She didn't want a body. She wanted them all to leave her alone. They always let her down when she needed them.'' WITH this break comes weight loss, continued psychological therapy, a suicide attempt and guilt; she feels responsible for her mother miscarrying the sibling who would have prevented her loneliness. Reality begins to twist and control the fantasies. Dick Clark yells at her; she feels herself compared to the fantasy friends. She manages to move to New York and very methodically and carefully hold down a job; but finally reality and fantasy collide.

The novel's weakness is that all aspects of reality are vague and undeveloped; flat characters seem to surface only to fill a role. And thus the conflict between fantasy and reality is not fully resolved. However, this weakness also proves a strength because Ms. Ratner's faithfulness to her heroine's narrowed vision leaves the reader with the sensation of mental illness, helplessly spinning to a stack of 45's.