#10 The Wonder Spot

I saw Melissa Bank at the 'ladies' afternoon at the IFOA this year and bought a copy of The Wonder Spot shortly thereafter. Her reading was hilarious and her delivery dry. The passage that she picked was perfect for the setting and Bank did well with the audience too.

So much brouhaha came about this summer after Curtis Sittenfeld's review in the Times, but after reading the book, I'm tending to agree with her thoughts. The book is more of a series of vignettes than an actual story. Each chapter is separated by even smaller little bits of writing that read like scenes from an excercise in a creative writing class. It's hard to understand where Bank's decision making came from in terms of how she chose to tell the story. The events she chooses to leave in and what she keeps out is somewhat mystifying. The book would have been so much better if she made the decision to plum the emotional depths of a few important parts of Sophie's life instead of hovering somewhere on the surface.

The Wonder Spot moves quickly through Sophie Applebaum's life; it starts when she's about twelve and by the time the book has finished, almost thirty years have passed. Bank's witty prose flits in and out of Sophie's various love affairs and ineffectual career choices. She's a very funny writer and has the ability to sum up a situation in a few short sentences. But it's a style that might seem more fitting for a short story than an entire book.

I felt the same way about The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing. But in terms of The Wonder Spot, I really miss an overarching plot; it would have stopped me from thinking, "What is this book about?" Because in this case, it's just not enough that it's about Sophie's life, because, well, nothing happens. She sort of ends up exactly where she starts, new boyfriend, newish job, and no real revelations. And in terms of her intellectual growth? Well, it too is very much like where she started: average and adolescent.

All of the important things that do happen, seem to happen in parenthesis. Her father dies in passing, one of her boyfriends (one that doesn't even have his own chapter) dies, and she loses her best friend (of sorts), but we never see and/or hear of the emotional involvement. We simply move on to the next stage in her life, a new art class, a new boyfriend and an attempt to find a new job.

I liked the book to some extent, but I just wanted there to be more. I just wanted something, anything, to happen to Sophie that pushes her past bland optimism and dry wit.