The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank
#46 in my 50 book challenge for the year. Though not labelled as such, this is a novel in stories. We meet Sophie Applebaum with her family at her cousin’s bat mitzvah, and re-visit them periodically through the next two decades of life changes. The book could be read simplistically, and wrongly, as Sophie’s quest to find a man. Instead, I found Bank created a tapestried life for Sophie that also included her evolution in self-awareness, jobs, friendships and family relations. Bank’s writing is deceptive. Her style is spare yet razor sharp. She is able to convey characters and nuances in relationships with very few words. Her characters are recognizable without being cliches. I loved the charming but unreliable crush in “Teen Romance” and the should-be-right-but-isn’t guy of “The One After You.” The book is both funny and sad. It ends with Sophie getting the best of an old boyfriend at a party in Brooklyn as she leaves with a new one, and in a job that she isn’t embarrassed to admit. It wasn’t so much a happily-ever-after ending, as much as the highest, happiest point she had yet reached, one that she might yet go beyond.
On our second cigarette break, he offered me his jacket, and I took it without a word. He said, “So, what line of work are you in, Applebaum?”
When I told him I wrote advertising copy, he asked if he’d seen any of my ads.
“Live live live girls girls girls?” I said. “That’s mine.”
He seemed to know that I’d made this joke before; he went right by it. (P. 214)