kthread reads: the wonder spot
The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
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, cigarette gestures, and composure beyond her teenage years. Plot details are in service of protagonist Sophie’s one-liners, and aside from college roommate Venice (who counts herself lucky she wasn’t named ‘Gondola’ or ‘Canal’), the book settles into the yawning heteronormativity of this genre.
The difference being, the significant affair is between the city and Sophie—the narrative drives toward Williamsburg and Pennsylvania (and back) instead of a ring. In the penultimate story, she is rescued from party drama and a suitor who will disappear before the next episode with a wonderful line of prose that stretches out to lift her from the loft’s balcony.
In the midst of another party with an indie rock date, Sophie thinks:
The women are young, young, young, liquidy and sweet-looking, they are batter and I am the sponge cake they don’t know they’ll become. I stand here, a lone loaf, stuck to the pan.
Sophie’s baking line reminded me of one of my favorite exes, who hung a large poster of that incorrigible loafer-poet Walt Whitman on a wall and winked at me; “Isn’t he handsome?” he said.
“Mm,” I replied; alone with the poster’s self-satisfied grin, I rolled my eyes. Sure, this old man could call himself large, contain multitudes—in this younger man’s apartment, I felt like a floufy sponge cake, bloated with age.
Connecting the reader with those interior moments—like when we turn social unease into a self-deprecating food metaphor—demonstrates the promise good work in this genre still holds. Sophie and the musician pick up milk and the paper on their way back, closing the narrative with a small, habitual New Yorker moment that might lead (as all those airbrushed magazine covers in late-night corner grocers guarantee) to the discovery of the wonder spot.
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Posted Thursday, January 8th, 2009, 12:39 pm * Filed in Books. * Tags: bank, book, kristen, kthread, melissa, reads, review, spot, taylor, wonder. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 17th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I knew i was going to like this book when the main character Sophie, in debating how to tell her father she wants out of Hebrew school states,
*I decided I would talk to my father after dinner; I planned to tell him that I had no Hebrew aptitude and also to convey the message of Bob Dylan’s song “It Ain’t Me, Babe.”
The book was a reminder of the East Coast, specifically the New York I sometimes know, but often don’t at all. It conjured up images of old friends, of working at a desk, of desperation. Sophie ponders why so few are called, why so few people know exactly how they will spend their lives:
*I was like everyone else; I fell into a job, and I worked at it. It didn’t seem wrong to want more, but it was wrong to expect it to be delivered.
The Wonder Spot played on my recollections of past relationships, if only for a day. Not to mention the insecurities that tag along. At a party Sophie sees an ex, while with a new boyfriend Vincent:
*Phew! Seth will think another man loved me; he will think I am the lovable kind of woman, the kind a man better love right or somebody else will.
I liked following Sophie around while she practiced typing all day. I enjoyed ease dropping on relationships, remembering moments I’ve tried to forget. I thoroughly enjoyed finding someone so frustrated, disillusioned, and pessimistic willing to let me in.
Good first book of the year Kristen.
Rating- 4 stars
January 17th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Kat, so glad you liked this one. I thought the desk job riffs might amuse you.
A good beginning to our literary year, and we’ll see much more of the internal character thoughts in Mrs. Dalloway—I’m hoping Ben will also chime in with his excellent readings of that novel (dropping it in the mail to you this week).