The Wonder Spot
Six years after her amazingly successful debut, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank rewards her fans for their patience with The Wonder Spot, a refreshingly honest interpretation of one young woman’s journey into adulthood. As we follow heroine Sophie Applebaum through a comfortable, yet awkward childhood in suburban Pennsylvania to the challenges of finding love and a career in midtown Manhattan, The Wonder Spot is never guilty of the self-indulgent traps set by other members of the Chick Lit genre Bank helped launch.
We first meet the Applebaum clan on their way to cousin Rebecca’s bat mitzvah in Chappaqua, New York, where Sophie ends up sneaking cigarettes in the woods with a handsome eighth grader one year her senior. Yet even this minor rebellion is more charming than anything else; as with most of her future transgressions, Sophie is less the instigator than the innocent witness. Defining moments in Sophie’s life are revealed through her relationships: an almost mythical college roommate named Venice; her charismatic yet capricious older brother; her brilliant younger brother; her unpenetrable father; and her hilarious grandmother, who takes it upon herself to save her “Sophila” from “impending spinsterhood.” Of course no real journey into young womanhood is complete without a series of committment phobic, potentially deliquent, overly nice men whose appearances seem less about love than about demonstrating our heroine’s inability to ever truly be comfortable with herself. As Sophie observes during a seventh grade skating party, “I felt sure that everyone was looking at me and then realized that no one was, and i experienced the distinct shame of each.”
Undeniably clever, occasionally hilarious, and often poignant, The Wonder Spot is captivating enough for readers to forgive Sophie’s indecisive, self-destructive tendancies and simply bask in her sincerity. –Gisele Toueg
| Wonder Woman: An Amazon.com Interview with Melissa Bank |
Melissa Bank’s bestselling 1999 debut, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, took readers by storm and heralded the wave of Chick Lit to follow in its wake. Bank is back with her new book, The Wonder Spot, a series of interconnected stories chronicling the bittersweet misadventures of middle-child Sophie Applebaum, from adolescence to adulthood. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons exchanged e-mail with Bank to talk about writer’s block, Curtis Sittenfeld’s very public take-down in the Sunday Times, and the dreaded “c” word–Chick Lit.
Read our Amazon.com interview with Melissa Bank
| Wonder Woman: An Amazon.com Interview with Melissa Bank |
Melissa Banks debut, The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, was a literary landmark and a runaway bestseller. Now, in The Wonder Spot, she reminds us why she has been compared to John Cheever and Raymond Carver. Shaped by Banks trademark blend of emotional depth and wry humor, The Wonder Spot traces the coming-of-age of Sophie, black sheep of the Applebaum family of Surrey, Pennsylvania. As we follow her from the sweet bewildering moments of adolescence through the rigors of life and love in New York City, we are treated to a profoundly intelligent, page-turning triumph that confirms Melissa Banks reputation as a singular talent.
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars Interminable, and less interesting even than my own boring life
Melissa Bank is obviously very gifted and this book is filled with characters and dialogue that seem very real. She is either a great reporter or has a remarkable ability to imagine and recreate ordinary life. Unfortunately, none of it is very interesting. I could not for the life of me figure out why I should care about the personal life/career quest/apartment search of her vapid heroine. Also, characters appear, then vanish, never to reappear. New characters pop up half way through the book who are supposed to have been lifelong friends. I did gain some insight into what goes through the mind of an average, slightly underachieving, aspiring editorial assistant. But it was heavy sledding.
The book raises important questions about whether literature has to be more exciting than real life or whether that is mere escapism. I feel there should be something extraordinary even about descriptions of the ordinary, and this book’s realism and attention to detail just were not enough.
5 Stars Thoroughly enjoyed this book!
I recently picked up The Wonder Spot from a bargain table at a local bookstore - having never heard of the author Melissa Bank, plus the fact that the book had been relegated to the bargain table, I didn’t expect it to be anything more than a bit of fluff - perfect to read whilst on the beach. I loved this book - the further I got into it the more I adored the main character, Sophie Applebaum, and felt like she was somebody I knew. When I got half way through I was starting to dread coming to the end of this book. The other characters in the book were all wonderful and I enjoyed the relationship she had with her brothers, in particular Jack, their witty repartee and Jack’s witty one liners had me laughing out loud (Sophie: “You never ask me any questions”. Jack: “Sorry. Do you have the time?”) and the visit that Sophie, her mother and brother make to their Grandmother was priceless. Thoroughly enjoyed this book!
4 Stars A book doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth reading
The book begins with a young Sophie who is so well drawn, and whose family is depicted with such keen, hilarious insight, that it’s well worth the price of admission. Bank is fabulous at drawing realistic characters and knowing exactly what they think, feel, and say. Young Sophie will help you remember all the nuances of that age and her depiction of her uneasy friendship with a conflicted classmate in Hebrew school is truly brillant. Family personalities and dynamics are spot on, and Sophie’s tense relationship with her soon-to-be sister-in-law is priceless.
Sophie herself is an interesting protagonist. She is honestly portrayed as a somewhat incompetant slacker.
The problems I had with the book had more to do with plot. Characters, such as boyfriends, childhood friends and a college roommate, appear and have intense relations with Sophie, only to disappear from the narrative. While they are there, they are well-drawn, offer enticing bits of conversation, and seem to hint at a purpose for being in the book. But we never hear from them again. At one point, there was a boyfriend who seemed like he was going to be ‘the one.’ Perhaps a marriage, a crisis, or something to move the book along. But he suddenly disappears. Did an editor redline him to death? By the end of the book, I had lost track of the relationships - particularly boyfriends, and felt like Sophie never developed into anything, or formed an important relationship — people came and went, and she had great conversations with them while they were there, and that was it. Sort of like a series of vignettes or short stories hooked together with one central character.
That being said, Bank is such a talented writer that it is still worth reading this book for the excellent beginning and wonderful character depictions.
5 Stars Hilarious and inspiring
This book is hilarious, real, poignant and comforting — there are others out there as awkward in their own skin as I am. Sophie Applebaum feels like my new best friend and I’m cheering her through every blunder. The type of book you want to call in sick to your temp-job to finish reading.
3 Stars Drifting Along
I picked up Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot because I had seen copies of her novel, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, and I thought, this might be amusing. And it was. The Wonder Spot is an episodic novel told in the voice of Sophie Applebaum. The first chapter introduces us to Sophie, a young Jew growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, sandwiched between two brothers, daughter to a judge and a homemaker. Sophie feels keenly her inability to fit in with her peers at school and at synagogue, and this lack follows her throughout her young adulthood and the novel. She goes to college, finds employment, and bounces around trying to find herself and her soul mate.
Sophie is extremely likable, witty and sardonic. Some of her insights induced a laugh from me. Although her struggles, especially through young adulthood, resonated with me, at some point, I became frustrated with her very passive approach to life. Sophie rarely initiated any of the major events in her own life, though she always felt them deeply. Even the seemingly smallest moments were noted by Sophie in sharp and amusing detail. The best and most engaging parts come from Sophie’s interactions with her family, especially with her brother Jack and her mother (her younger brother and father aren’t as clearly drawn). In the end, the stories are enjoyable, but I could never say that they coalesce into a novel. Indeed, the book is missing an overall theme other than woman drifting through life and men. Almost nothing is resolved, though the final story appears to try to convince the reader that Sophie finally does find some conviction in herself, and thus, acts as a conclusion to the novel. Unfortunately it comes seemingly from nowhere, and is unconvincing.
The novel is read by the author, which really gave me the feeling that I was reading a thinly disguised autobiography. She does an excellent job giving Sophie as strong a voice as Sophie could ever have.
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