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Loading... The wonder spotby Melissa Bank
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  Airycat | Sep 5, 2009 |  Excerpt from www.HomeGirl.typepad.com: The whole time I was reading this book I felt like I was reading about little pieces of me only from, like, a strange parallel universe where instead of being a black girl with a religious upbringing in the south and strange but sensible insecurities, I was a Jewish girl with a religious upbringing in the northeast. Sophie Applebaum's thoughts and insecurities and experiences at different stages in her life are so similar to mine. In a way, this novel has assured me that I'm not such a weird bird after all. This was the first time I've read a novel and really identified with a character so closely. FULL REVIEW: http://homegirl.typepad.com/home_girl... (  ) HomeGirlQuel | Apr 14, 2009 | It was hard to like this book, but it was hard not to like this book. This about sums up my feelings about The Wonder Spot, and sounds like something the narrator, Sophie Applebaum, would say. Her apathy is matched only by her dysfunctional approach to relationships (family, work, romantic, etc.). I listened to this as an audiobook, and I enjoyed Bank's reading of the book. I think an author can lend an authenticity that no one else can. The only problem I had with it was that it was CONFUSING! Characters came and went, and came back again, and I could never tell how old Sophie was in a given chapter. Sometimes it seemed that 10 years had passed, but was probably only 6 months. Other times, I realized that we had jumped ahead several years with no warning. I just couldn't keep track of everyone and everything that happened. Otherwise, the "day to day" of the book was enjoyable, and I liked Bank's depiction of looking for love in your 20s and 30s. (  ) jatrees | Apr 7, 2009 | I like to browse libraries shelves and discover books that way. Nowadays I also like to browse the books-on-cd section of the small branch of the public library I live nearby. That's where I found Melissa Bank's The Wonder Spot. I probably would not have picked it anywhere else. But from that limited collection this seemed good enough to listen to and had a Jewish theme. In retrospect I think I should have been more careful as it turned out a bad choice for me. It might work for others though. Part of my problem was the voice it was read by, the author's herself. The main character, whose life the book follows from preteen to late 20's, never really knew what she wanted, she just seemed to be floating by. Her only decisions were non-decision, making sure she does not do something, like her bat-mitzvah or making moves in relationships. Her sanguine nature was well-reflected by the reader's voice, which was monotone. The intonation of every sentence in the first half of the book went way down and slowed down as well. This created a depressive effect. In a way this reading style fit the character's ambivalence, but made it less interesting to follow. It was hard to care for the fate of a person, who did not really care for herself. She just bumped from one job to another, from one relationship to another, without having feeling really passionate about either. The disadvantage of listening to a book and not having great memory is that I forgot the four or five truly great sentences the book contained. I had no chance of marking them in a book or jotting them down, because I listed to the book in the gym in the course of 8 or 9 workouts. I do not remember any of these sentences, but they were revelatory on how to put together phrases that can capture specific moods in a most precise manner. Without these I might have felt that it was a waste of my time to listen to the whole thing. But now I know that this kind of coming of age story is not for my taste. break | Jan 13, 2009 | Meh  ptzop | Nov 28, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
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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
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400)
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Sophie, the narrator, seems so much like so many women I have known, taking life as it comes, trying to make sense of it and not having any really profound revelations. We watch her grow and come into her own sense of being. Her brothers aren't a whole lot unlike my own. It isn't the specific actions or events, or even the personalities, but the interaction between the siblings that I related to. Ultimately, I found myself considering how different events in my own life are from Sophie's and wondering how other women relate to to her. In a way it's a literary equivalent of a '50s-'60's coffee klatch, where women share their everyday lives.
If you're not fond of 'literary' books, if you need fast paced action, you probably won't like this book. If you appreciate writing style, like getting to know characters, even though nothing remarkable happens to them, you will definitely enjoy this book. (