The Wonder Spot - by Melissa Bank (Paperback)

About the Book

Through the eyes of a compelling outsider, this title captures the life cycle of a family and watches their lives--and the outsider's--unfold over the ensuing two decades.

Book Synopsis

"This book is perfect." --Hadley Freeman, The Guardian

A funny, tender, and wickedly insightful look at a young woman's forays into love, work, and friendship over the course of 25 years

Nothing comes easily to Sophie Applebaum, the black sheep of her family trying to blend in with the herd. Uneasily situated between two brothers, Sophie first appears as the fulcrum and observer of her clan in "Boss of the World." Then, at college, in "The Toy Bar," she faces a gauntlet of challenges as Best Friend to the dramatic and beautiful Venice Lambourne, curator of "perfect things." In her early twenties, Sophie is dazzled by the possibilities of New York City during the Selectric typewriter era--only to land solidly back in Surrey, PA after her father's death.

The Wonder Spot follows Sophie's quest for her own identity--who she is, what she loves, whom she loves, and occasionally whom she feels others should love--over the course of 25 years. In an often-disappointing world, Sophie listens closely to her own heart. And when she experiences her 'Aha!' moments--her own personal wonder spots--it's the real thing. In this tremendous follow-up to her runaway bestseller, The Girls' Guide To Hunting And Fishing, Bank returns with her signature combination of devilishly self-deprecating humor, and again shares her vast talent for capturing a moment, taking it to heart, and giving it back to her readers.

Review Quotes

"What Austen did for marriage, Melissa Bank does for serial monogamy . . . She has a light touch that is both deft and devastating - her characters come to life in a brush stroke and yet are not easily dismissed from memory. This book is a lovely, funny, melancholy stroll through twenty years of a woman's life - and when I finished it, I wished I was getting twenty more."
--Zadie Smith

"The tone [of The Wonder Spot] is perfect, the stories are perfect, the characters are perfect and every word, seemingly so casually chosen, is perfect . . . Bank is incredibly clever with structure . . . As a lesson in literary compression, how to condense a story without sacrificing emotion, it is breathtaking."
--The Guardian

"Marvelous . . . Bank's sharp wit and streamlined prose serve Sophie's exquisitely honed female sensibility, placing the author squarely in the tradition of Clare Booth Luce and Nora Ephron. Like them, Bank possesses a prodigious talent for snappy one liners, and her self-deprecating anecdotes belie intelligence and sophistication."
--The Washington Post

"Prodigiously talented, mordantly wry and wise, Bank offers [...] irresistible reading."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"There's a warmth and a winning lack of pretension in Bank's writing."
--The New Yorker

"A five course meal: loaded with pleasure, but offering enough protein and complex carbohydrates to satisfy both body and soul . . . Bank mixes sadness with humor while leavening difficulty with laughter to create a rich narrative that gratifies on many levels."
--The Los Angeles Times

"Bank's bittersweet, tremendously winning return [is] . . . enthralling and engaging."
--Jennifer Weiner, Entertainment Weekly

"Compelling . . . [Bank's] prose is always bright and funny, and it's filled with perfectly concise descriptions."
--The AV Club

About the Author

Melissa Bank (1960-2022) was the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing and The Wonder Spot, which have been translated into thirty languages. Her short stories and nonfiction were published in the Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, Ploughshares, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, O, The Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere, as well as broadcast by NPR and the BBC. She won the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and held an MFA from Cornell University. A longtime resident of New York City and East Hampton, New York, she taught in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton and wrote until her passing in 2022.