Shelley Civkin Richmond Public Library

Devilish sarcasm and delightful wit

Melissa Bank displays quirky humour in The Wonder Spot

The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank is my most recent early summer read, and I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot.

Bank’s quirky, weird sense of humour, dry wit and good storytelling make each of the interconnected stories in this novel worth reading.

The main character, Sophie Applebaum, is a middle child, and she flounders around from childhood to adulthood. She is a young Jewish woman who’s trying to find her place in the world, and make a life for herself.

Her search includes numerous lovers, disastrous careers, and haphazard places she calls home. Talking about a failed typing test and extrapolating to the rest of her life, Sophie says: “I knew I hadn’t done well but I was hoping, which struck me now as the basic emotion of my entire life.”

I think that lots of people would enjoy this book, but honestly, I think it’s more of a woman’s book than a man’s. Women (or at least some) could relate really well to Sophie’s life. For instance, on her aptitude for domestication Sophie says: “In the last few years, the closest I’d come to cooking dinner for anyone was opening a fresh pack of cigarettes and emptying an ashtray.” That’s right up there with me wiping the lipstick marks off the orange juice container before a date would arrive.

Sophie is a bit of a disappointment to some though, well...specifically her grandmother, who thinks that the measure of Sophie’s success lies in her finding a husband. Preferably a nice, Jewish doctor. But a Jewish lawyer or accountant would do, too. Not that there’s any pressure or anything...

As she fumbles her way through life, Sophie encounters all sorts of uber-uncomfortable situations and reacts with self-deprecating humour and patience, despite the many opportunities for disaster. On entering a party of much younger, much cooler people, with her boyfriend, she thinks: “I am a solid, trying to do a liquid’s job,” but she soldiers on, ever the good sport.

Wonderful at creating odd, yet spot-on comparisons, author Melissa Bank describes a young woman, saying: “Hovering beside him was a girl so thin she might have faxed herself; her sheaf of friends joined her and folded themselves into the next booth.”

I can tell from reading this novel that Bank is the kind of person I’d enjoy having to a dinner party, or sitting next to on a train for 36 hours. She’s open and down-to-earth, and best of all she’s full of devilish sarcasm and delightful wit.

Bank is also the author of The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing.

Shelley J. Civkin is the Communications Officer at the Richmond Public Library. For other popular reading suggestions, check out Richmond Public Library's Web site at www.yourlibrary.ca/goodbooks.