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The Wonder Spot
by Melissa Bank
After a six-year wait, Bank finally returns with a new book to follow her bestseller "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing." This one--a novel--follows Sophie Applebaum from her teen years in a Philly suburb to her adulthood in Manhattan.
Viking, 336 pages
05/31/2005
$24.95
ISBN: 0670034118
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Weiner
So The Wonder Spot, Bank's bittersweet, tremendously winning return, isn't just a great read. It is a wake-up call, alerting the literary establishment that stories about young women's coming-of-age can still be enthralling, engaging, and deserving of their notice.
Publishers Weekly
Engrossing, engaging--it's a wonderful return for Bank.
The Guardian Joanna Briscoe
As a writer, Bank is extraordinarily self-disciplined. Her prose couldn't be tighter; yet it could not appear more effortless. She never strains for effect, never bangs the drum or indulges in extraneous description. There is not much further she can go in this particular direction: within the limits she sets herself, she achieves something close to perfection.
The Independent Suzi Feay
Bank's great strength is characterisation, and her characters are if anything even more compelling this time around.
Chicago Sun-Times Elisabeth Egan
Forget sophomore slump: this book proves that the second time's a charm. In Bank's case, it's equal parts brains and charm.
Houston Chronicle John Freeman
If all books were this funny, television would be the thing in trouble, not the other way around.
Booklist Kristine Huntley
Bank's debut, "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" (1999), was a standout in a genre that was finding its footing at the time; six years later, her follow-up should also gain her both attention and acclaim for the stark frankness with which it looks at modern relationships. [15 Mar 2005, p.1245]
Chicago Tribune Francesca Delbanco
The small stuff in The Wonder Spot is truly compelling, and for a book so eminently readable, the absence of bells and whistles is an impressive feat. [19 June 2005]
San Francisco Chronicle Heller McAlpin
Bank has a gift for capturing interpersonal dynamics, whether between close family members or estranged friends, with a winning mix of wisecracks and tenderness.
Washington Post Jenny McPhee
Bank's sharp wit and streamlined prose serve Sophie's exquisitely honed female sensibility, placing the author squarely in the tradition of Clare Boothe Luce and Nora Ephron.
Los Angeles Times Bernadette Murphy
In The Wonder Spot, Bank mixes humor with sadness while leavening difficulty with laughter to create a rich narrative that gratifies on many levels.
New York Observer Ruth Davis Konigsberg
Ms. Bank's humorous wordplay -- one of the many things that should have elevated Girl's Guide in the public perception above the excruciatingly simple-minded Bridget Jones's Diary -- is again on display in The Wonder Spot. [13 June 2005, p.11]
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Michelle Berry
There is no climax here, no real denouement, nothing that forces this book into an obvious structure. Yet The Wonder Spot feels as deep and as complicated and satisfying as any good novel.
Atlantic Monthly Elizabeth Judd
Melissa Bank's terrific new novel lacks the topical conflicts and poetic imagery that critics appreciate, and its strong suit a companionable, offhand sense of humor leading to subtle revelations of character is deceptively difficult to achieve.
Daily Telegraph Anthony Quinn
The Wonder Spot doesn't break new ground, but it does an impressive job of covering the old ground.
The New York Times Janet Maslin
Pound for pound, line for line, story for story, The Wonder Spot is a better-honed and steadier volume. It's also the less striking book, if only because it so flagrantly reiterates the first one ["The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing"].
The New Yorker
There's a warmth and a winning lack of pretension in Bank's writing, but, like her protagonist, she can't seem to muster the energy to take her interests further than flirtation.
The Onion A.V. Club Noel Murray
At times, Bank loses her way, turning the book into the kind of glib filleting of modern romance that's cluttered up the fiction shelves in the post-Sex And The City/Bridget Jones era.
USA Today Deidre Donahue
The anxiety-racked voice of contemporary womanhood that was so appealing the first time has become a self-conscious whine.
Library Journal Tania Barnes
It's a pity, then, that as the novel progresses, Sophie seems to recede, her voice lost in a rotating roster of boyfriends. It's almost as if Bank weren't quite sure where to take her character and in the end dumps her on the arm of another boyfriend, no more edified. [15 Apr 2005, p.71]
Daily Telegraph Catherine Shoard
There really is no plot here other than the no-show of Mr Right and, for all its literary noodlings, The Wonder Spot is chick lit, and not very good chick lit at that.
Wall Street Journal Danielle Crittenden
Just when you think the story might get interesting, it doesn't.
The New York Times Book Review Curtis Sittenfeld
Good novels allow us to feel what the characters feel, no matter how dissimilar their circumstances and ours. ''The Wonder Spot'' contains real meaning only if we identify with Sophie enough to infuse it with meaning of our own.
Boston Globe Gail Caldwell
All of this would be fine or better, were there an authorial eye -- something higher than irony and more merciful than self-pity -- to accompany its heroine's misadventures.
 The average user rating for this book is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
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