By: Melissa Bank Publisher: Viking Adult Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Format: Bargain Price Label: Viking Adult Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 336 Publication Date: May 31, 2005
Product Description: The eagerly anticipated return of Melissa Bank, author of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing.
Unabridged CD - 10 CDs, 11 hours
Amazon.com: 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
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!
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.
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.
A decent book. This was an entertaining read. The characters were full and descriptive, although in later chapters when new people showed up I felt I had forgotten a prior introduction to them and flipped back through the book looking for a reference that wasn't there. It was an odd way of introducing new characters: pretending they were there all along... The ending was slightly unsatisfying to me because of its lack of resolution, but that's a complaint I have a lot, and if you like that sort of thing, then you'll probably really like this book. I very much enjoyed it until the end didn't really end and that colored my opinion of the book as a whole.
Wonderful I don't understand why more people haven't raved about the Wonder Spot. I absolutely loved it. Sophie, the protagonist, is someone so many of us mere mortals relate to: she means well, but she keeps paving her own road, if not to hell, at least to limbo. I loved that each chapter was in another phase of her life, career, and romantic journey. Coincidentally she seems to be roughly my age, so I had fun recognizing the fashions and mentality of each era she wrote of. Hilarious lines -that I had to repeat to my ever-attentive husband-were scattered throughout the chapters, often unexpectedly in tragic moments. Good example "Do you think Chris and I will get back together?" Sophie asks her longtime friend at Chris' funeral. I hope Ms. Bank keeps them coming. She truly has a "calling".
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
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. 
