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The Wonder Spot Melissa Bank

The Wonder Spot By Melissa Bank

The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank


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Condition - Very Good
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The Wonder Spot Summary

The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank

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.

The Wonder Spot Reviews

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 Melissa Bank

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.

Additional information

CIN0143037218VG
9780143037217
0143037218
The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Penguin Putnam Inc
20060530
336
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - The Wonder Spot