Melissa Banks debut, The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, was a literary landmark and a runaway bestseller. Now, in The Wonder Spot<...
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Jan 28, 2012
Tory
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“I hesitated, but when she handed the cigarette to me I took it, and when she lit the match I leaned forward. I imitated my mother accepting a light from my father and exhaled as she did, ceiling-ward.
Margie held her own cigarette between her teeth like a killer; she was imitating someone, too - maybe the Penguin from Batman.”
“Up until that moment, I’d been at the earliest stage of love, when you feel it will turn you into the person you want to be. Now, his gentle voic More...
Margie held her own cigarette between her teeth like a killer; she was imitating someone, too - maybe the Penguin from Batman.”
“Up until that moment, I’d been at the earliest stage of love, when you feel it will turn you into the person you want to be. Now, his gentle voic More...
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Dec 16, 2009
Taylor
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I'm so-so about this book. I found it very uneven. There's a clear division here - childhood, relationships - both of which can be interesting in the hands of the right writer. It's obvious that she writes well, and this has its magical moments, but overall it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. As she gets more and more into the relationships, she speaks less on her life outside of them and jumps from one to the other, without transitioning very effectively. The ending also feels like a huge co
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Dec 17, 2009
Kate
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The pointless ending made me realize how pointless Sophie's life is. I felt disappointed for her. She seems unable to love, or unable to commit. Is it that hard to fall in love with one of her many boyfriends? No one is perfect, but that doesn't mean no one is worth your love. I think Sophie is typical of many people in our culture, which makes me sad. The writing is not bad (despite its many similarities to The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing); if you're a mediocre, middle class perso
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Dec 16, 2009
Abby
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Melissa Bank is not Chick-Lit.
And why is that?
Because her heroines never fixate on their weight, their clothing, their hairstyle, their men.
Bank has this way of skimming over all of those, and while the men are still existing (especially in Wonder Spot), her heroine Sophie is analyzing more why she needs them than the fact that she DOES need them.
Sophie can't commit. She doesn't order for herself in restaurants or at bars. She has no ambition or i More...
And why is that?
Because her heroines never fixate on their weight, their clothing, their hairstyle, their men.
Bank has this way of skimming over all of those, and while the men are still existing (especially in Wonder Spot), her heroine Sophie is analyzing more why she needs them than the fact that she DOES need them.
Sophie can't commit. She doesn't order for herself in restaurants or at bars. She has no ambition or i More...
Jan 29, 2012
Manda
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I saw Melissa Bank speak while I was still in college in 2005, when she had finished "The Wonder Spot" but had not yet published it. I really liked "The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing," so when I saw this book at the Dollar Store (for a dollar!), I just couldn't pass it up.
"The Wonder Spot" follows Sophia Applebaum from late adolescence to adulthood and chronicles events & feelings that many of us experience: loss of a loved one, the disappointment More...
"The Wonder Spot" follows Sophia Applebaum from late adolescence to adulthood and chronicles events & feelings that many of us experience: loss of a loved one, the disappointment More...
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Dec 16, 2009
Michelle
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This is Banks' followup to A Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing. She follows a young Jewish woman from girlhood to adulthood through relationship after relationship, each one seeming like the end all at the time. It's interesting to see the character's point of view change over time, as well as to witness the changing/maturing of her familial relationships.
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Jan 29, 2012
Golddigger1799
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This book sucked. I like the statement in the review that a woman named Kate left about this book-Sophie's life is pointless. And since the book is centered around her-thus the book is pointless. Sophie is not likeable-she's a train wreck, which is fine to be a train wreck and to center a book about a train wreck but there is nothing redemptive about this character. Sophie never learns anything, her life never improves, she never learns anything about herself and relationships, it is just a
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Aug 11, 2008
Alison
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Whoever said those who were mediocre and middle class might like this was apparently right. I'm presumed to be both, and I think Melissa Bank has the best handle on the three-dimensional reality of being a single woman of anyone writing about "bachelorettes" today. Her protagonist has strong family relationships, complex friendships, moves through serious career changes, goes to school more than once, and gets beyond herself to examine others who have the same set of life's trials and
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May 28, 2008
Alison
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I thought the book was well-written and perceptive but I got tired of Sophie's passivity and her inability to commit to a relationship or a career. And as so many other readers have commented, I thought the ending was contrived. My favorite part of the book is actually the chapter in which her sharp-tongued grandmother has a stroke and becomes sweet--if only it weren't combined with a description of an annoying doctor Sophie is dating. Although each chapter can stand alone, Bank makes desultory
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Jan 08, 2009
kthread
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If nothing else, former lovers should give good fodder for brunch conversations. Laughter (and mimosas and cosmopolitans) mitigates the grieving process for relationships, particularly important for a the "chick lit" cottage industry that Melissa Bank is said to have spawned with her Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing in 2000.
Much like her previous collection of short stories (the format perhaps best suited for her style), this novel opens with a protagonist of biting wit More...
Much like her previous collection of short stories (the format perhaps best suited for her style), this novel opens with a protagonist of biting wit More...
Sep 09, 2011
Kiwiflora
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February last year I read The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing by the same author and wasn't terribly impressed. It was all very Bridget-Jones-try-hard, Jane the main character was incredibly dull and I am just did not get it. In fact when the book was published, according to Wikipedia, Melissa Bank was compared to Helen Fielding (creator of Bridget) and held, along with Helen, for being the creators of chick lit. Maybe in America...So I wasn't terribly fussed about starting this one, but bec
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Nov 07, 2010
Stephanie
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I liked (not loved) this book. I found myself not wanting to put it down, but mostly out of hope. Hope that the main character Sophie would soon have some breakthrough towards maturity. Throughout the book, and especially toward the end, I alternated between hopeful expectation and frustration. There were times that I found myself nodding and thinking "I've done that / felt that / wished I was or wasn't that". However, there were more times I felt myself getting frustrated with Sop
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Aug 29, 2010
Becca
rated it:
A GIRL'S GUIDE TO HUNTING & FISHING got passed around my friends in college after a very smart professor included it on her women & lit syllabus. Fortunately for me, the dearth of what I think I want to read at the Shirlington Library made me find THE WONDER SPOT.
It was cathartic. I could have written the chapter "Teen Romance" and "The One After You." Slight spoiler: I welled up a bit reading the "Teen Romance" one in particular. I had almost exactly More...
It was cathartic. I could have written the chapter "Teen Romance" and "The One After You." Slight spoiler: I welled up a bit reading the "Teen Romance" one in particular. I had almost exactly More...
May 09, 2010
Tamara
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I really like Melissa Bank as an observer, and this book has a lot of passages that take her out of the realm of "chick-lit" (if she ever was in it) and into the category of writer who wastes her talents on talking about the same people in every book. I really connect to her descriptions of the places she sets this book's stories in, and to certain aspects of her protagonist's character and story arc, but ultimately I think Bank falls short of drawing a complete or compelling human bei
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Mar 12, 2010
Sarah
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The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank is unique chick-lit in that it combines extreme sarcasm, humor, and wit with your typical coming-of-age novel.
Our heroine is Sophie Applebaum, a Jewish girl with two brothers, a judge for a father, and a scatter-brained mother. We meet Sophie initially when she is about twelve years old, and we join her in growing up well into her late thirties or so. Along the way we encounter and share with Sophie her many boyfriend experiences, as well as adventure More...
Our heroine is Sophie Applebaum, a Jewish girl with two brothers, a judge for a father, and a scatter-brained mother. We meet Sophie initially when she is about twelve years old, and we join her in growing up well into her late thirties or so. Along the way we encounter and share with Sophie her many boyfriend experiences, as well as adventure More...
Apr 30, 2009
Margaret
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I've read this before although I didn't realise it when I got it out of the library - partly because of the US / UK covers I expect. It's more like a series of short stories about the same characters than a novel. I've read other stuff by her & liked it - she's always very readable. I think she tends to write the same stuff over again - sticking to what she knows.
Just recently I was telling a friend about the episode when she is in a life-drawing class. I had forgotten the author, the More...
Just recently I was telling a friend about the episode when she is in a life-drawing class. I had forgotten the author, the More...
Jul 31, 2011
This book was not near as good as People magazine made it out to be. I guess I was hoping for an ugly duckling type transformation story and that’s not what I got, not even remotely close. The main character is a lost female searching for things that all of us at some point are looking for security, love, career, and most of all happiness. The words wonder spot appear only 2 times each and it’s towards the end. This book was very average although I could relate to the main character because
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May 06, 2011
Jennifer
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The Wonder Spot is quirky and funny in a subtle way. It details the social life (from childhood to almost middle age) of a woman who hasn’t quite found her place in the world. When her romantic life flourished, I cheered. When a relationship ended, I mourned. I found myself protective over the main character, loathing anyone who treated her poorly. I easily imagined all of the characters and found people in my own life who they were just like.
The story wasn’t entirely linear, and t More...
The story wasn’t entirely linear, and t More...
Jan 29, 2012
Kelly
rated it:
not as good as her debut novel, but still very sincere and simple. she's a great writer. from the book description, a sample of her writing as the main character 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."
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Dec 30, 2009
Amanda
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I finished Melissa Bank's The Wonder Spot a couple days ago. This is another collection of "short prose," same character throughout the collection of short stories... so it's not a short story collection, but it's not a novel (so it IS like Moral Disorder). Are there lots of books like these?
'Cause I like 'em.
I've read Bank's The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing at least four times, so I knew what I was getting into. I liked the stories quite a More...
'Cause I like 'em.
I've read Bank's The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing at least four times, so I knew what I was getting into. I liked the stories quite a More...
Sep 30, 2009
Maria
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I loved, loved, loved this book. Sophie is that underdog heroine who is just a normal girl with an awesome deadpan sense of humor. I found myself nodding my head and thinking, I remember doing that, feeling that, wishing I was/wasn't that. She is the super-hero for those of us who aren't the prettiest, smartest, most talented, consistently tardy and whose whites are never that white. I read other reviews saying that her inability to commit to a job or relationship got annoying, but I felt like i
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Apr 01, 2009
Natalye
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"The Wonder Spot" -Melissa Bank (2005)
While I admit to loving short stories, the one issue I have with a collection of them is that reading it in one setting tends to blur the story lines and characters. Admittedly, I'll sometimes begin reading the next story and forget what the one before was about. What I like about this book, is that each "short story" is a chapter in the same character's life, making it part short story collection and part novel. While the tim More...
While I admit to loving short stories, the one issue I have with a collection of them is that reading it in one setting tends to blur the story lines and characters. Admittedly, I'll sometimes begin reading the next story and forget what the one before was about. What I like about this book, is that each "short story" is a chapter in the same character's life, making it part short story collection and part novel. While the tim More...
Jun 30, 2010
Jan
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I picked up this book because I loved another of this author's books (The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing). Unfortunately, I found this book terribly disappointing.
I don't even know what the point of it was, as the main character, whose name I've already forgotten, spent the whole entire book going from one bad relationship to the next (friends, family, and romantic relationships) and one dead-end job to the next. I'm pretty sure she never reached the "wonder spot," wha More...
I don't even know what the point of it was, as the main character, whose name I've already forgotten, spent the whole entire book going from one bad relationship to the next (friends, family, and romantic relationships) and one dead-end job to the next. I'm pretty sure she never reached the "wonder spot," wha More...
Apr 04, 2009
Helen
rated it:
I actually finished this weeks ago, but am now just updating my review. I listen to the audio book for this one which was read by the author, who had a nice dry "npr" kind of tone to her reading. I definitely recommend the audio version. Parts of this were just downright hilarious. Other parts were just very astute observations about life and people, which is the kind thing I enjoy. On the surface, this book could seem uneventful and boring. The main character is really just an ordinar
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Feb 05, 2009
Reviewers likely licked their chops when they got the galleys to The Wonder Spot in the mail__a chance to take superstar Melissa Bank down a peg and write the predictable second-novel review: "Bank was just a one-book wonder_" But Bank defied them, and critics roundly agree that her second book shines just as brightly as The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing (1999). Yes, the two books share certain superficial similarities__young female protagonist, the presence of poodles, the death
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Dec 31, 2008
Alice
rated it:
Yet another $2 book from Goodwill. I remember vaguely liking Melissa Bank's first book, but I also remember feeling some ambivalence about it, which I also feel here. While it's an engrossing book - I stayed up late reading it - the main character is just sort of a sad sack. She's non-committal, lazy, passive, and not particularly intelligent, and at one point I just wanted to smack her and yell at her that her problems were of her own making and to stop whining about it. But I suppose lots of p
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Dec 10, 2007
Terry
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Oh my god, I LOVED this book! One of my favorites. Warning: with one exception, everyone else I recommended this book to didn't respond the way I did. (Which of course I took to be their failing, not the book's. Heh.)
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Oct 20, 2011
Georgette
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This was a pretty good book. It was, unlike the last three I read, an easy book to get into and stick with until the end.
Sophie Applebaum doesn't have anything come to her easy- from her Judaism school, to college, to her editorial jobs, to her relationships with her two brothers(and their respective partners), to her own love life, which goes through several stages here.
All in all, the book saunters through her life in a quiet and unassuming manner. Sophie finds her voic More...
Sophie Applebaum doesn't have anything come to her easy- from her Judaism school, to college, to her editorial jobs, to her relationships with her two brothers(and their respective partners), to her own love life, which goes through several stages here.
All in all, the book saunters through her life in a quiet and unassuming manner. Sophie finds her voic More...
Jan 02, 2012
Kerry
rated it:
I was debating between giving this 1 or 2 stars - maybe it is 1 1/2. I guess this is suppose to be a coming of age book. Every section is a new point in the new character's life - maybe with 5 - 10 years in between each section. What's annoying is that there is NO resolution to the story being told in each part of her life. Basically each part is her dating a new person or being infatuated with someone else. Also, characters are introduced who will never be talked about again OR they are in
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