Books |
The Wonder Spot
Melissa Bank
By
Published: Jan 01, 2005
Category:
Fiction
The first 45 pages of "The Wonder Spot" are pretty much a stone bore. Twelve year-old Sophie Applebaum goes to a Bat Mitzvah in Chappaqua. She has a hard time in Hebrew school. And although these scenes are well-written — Melissa Bank is nothing if not deft — I just did not give a damn about young Sophie.
And that, I suspect, is why no one is jumping up and down for "The Wonder Spot" as they did for Bank’s first book, "The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing," which sold a ton of copies. That’s weird. Both are collections of stories about young Jewish women who have escaped from Philadelphia’s suburbs into that Manhattan women’s army known as book publishing. In both collections, the women are wicked smart and verbal. In both, the women don’t have it easy finding love.
The difference? "Wonder Spot" is the better book.
So struggle through the first story. Or maybe: skim it. But know the book really begins on page 53, when Sophie arrives at college — and is, at last, old enough to be interesting. Suddenly she’s more than a big-breasted child of privilege. Now she has issues, and good ones at that. "What do I do with my life?" is a big one. A bigger one is men, and the mystery of romance, and how you fit a man into your life (or is the other way around: how you fit your life into a man’s).
This is not a book that belongs in the dreadful genre known as "chick lit." And what a relief that is! Sophie never mentions "Manolo" or "Jimmy Choo" — her roommate practically has to torture her to buy the used evening dress that might give her exquisite power over men. "I looked at myself for a long time," Bank writes of Sophie trying that dress on, "and I remember it as one of the only times in my life when I saw myself as beautiful." Is there one of us — man or woman — who can’t relate?
She wears that dress three times. The last time, she meets an ex-boyfriend. She was glad she was wearing the dress; it put extra emotion in his voice when he asked if she remembered him. She had been waiting for this moment: "I’d pictured turning my back to him or slapping his face or pretending that I couldn’t quite place him." And then, this killer line: "I’d had so many lovers since him, my first, and all of them so much more memorable." And then, the real killer line, the truth: "But when our eyes met and his look asked if I remembered him, my look answered that it did."
May I simply say: "Wow."
Out of college, and intro the struggling years. Sophie is a Good Girl, she spends time with her grandmother and calls her parents and actually cares what her brothers think. And once again, she risks losing me, because the shining genius of this book is the twin engine of Sophie and men, Sophie and work, and anything off to the side is like a fly buzzing in your face. Then a job happens, and an office, and the inevitable problems of people getting shoved into roles. But it gets better with the boyfriend — could Sophie be Getting Somewhere?
New story. Shift. Her brother has the Girlfriend from Hell, and doesn’t see it. New story. Shift. Her father dies, and she’s living, with her mother, at home. There’s a weekend in the country with her oldest friend and Matthew, her friend’s friend, and a set of complications that give Sophie hope and end a friendship. New story. Shift. There’s Bobby Guest, cloudy and lost, and, ultimately, not really available — we’ve all had our Bobbys. New story. Shift. Her mother has a boyfriend, married, from her youth; family stories wrestle with last chance romance. A neurologist appears; he sure seems like The One. Her grandmother — is this ironic? — has a stroke. And dies. New story. Shift….
And at this point — we’re close to the end now — you either care passionately about Sophie or wonder what all the fuss is about. Me, I cared. Not because Sophie is such an amazing woman, but because she’s not. She’s a good person, but not a great one, smart but no genius, destined never to achieve anything major. There are lots of women (and men) like that, moving through life, not quite getting anywhere, and if you have a heart, you root for them — you want them to wrap their fists around something they can hold on to. Like a husband, a wife: a lasting commitment that actually lasts.
Of course they can never put those dreams into words, even in the middle of the night. That’s too uncool, especially in Manhattan. But those are the dreams in back of all the clever talk, and Melissa Bank has you leaning in, hoping someone will whisper them to Sophie and she can say them right back. And all of that is between the lines, because Melissa Bank — one of our sassiest, most clever writers — is good enough to pull that off.
"The Wonder Spot" is a book at once funny and sad, irritating and satisfying. A book like life. And, in many places, a book that merges with life, that becomes life. Which is to say: a very good book indeed.
