Many years ago, I read Melissa Bank’s The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, a collection of linked stories about one woman’s coming of age and search for love. I don’t remember the individual stories too well, but I do remember being very impressed by how Bank’s sparse prose conveyed sharp insight and emotion, and how compelling her main character was. I didn’t expect to like the book as much as I did.
Bank has another book out – her first novel – called The Wonder Spot. The first review I read of this book was in the New York Times (subscription required) by Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep (which I loved), and it wasn’t a good one. Sittenfeld wrote:
To suggest that another woman’s ostensibly literary novel is chick lit feels catty, not unlike calling another woman a slut — doesn’t the term basically bring down all of us? And yet, with ”The Wonder Spot,” it’s hard to resist. A chronicle of the search for personal equilibrium and Mr. Right, Melissa Bank’s novel is highly readable, sometimes funny and entirely unchallenging; you’re not one iota smarter after finishing it. I’m as resistant as anyone else to the assumption that because a book’s author is female and because that book’s protagonist is a woman who actually cares about her own romantic future, the book must fall into the chick-lit genre. So it’s not that I find Bank’s topic lightweight; it’s that Bank writes about it in a lightweight way.
Sittenfeld had other complaints too: “[the] willy-nilly introduction and abandonment of characters is most problematic in Sophie’s parade of boyfriends, of whom there are about three times too many”; “[her] occasional serious observations are frustratingly shallow, cleverly worded more than insightful,” “[s]he fully describes events so peripheral they should have been quickly summarized if not eliminated altogether, yet she skims over important conversations.”
Ouch.
Other reviewers disagree pretty strongly with Sittenfeld. For example, author Elisabeth Egan, reviewing The Wonder Spot in the Chicago Sun-Times, called the book “vital and fresh and elegantly funny,” concluding that “the second time’s the charm” for Bank. Author Jennifer Weiner, reviewing for Entertainment Weekly (subscription required) gave the book an A:
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.
Here’s a blog post from Trashionista that liked the book, finding the main character “dry, funny and charming” and the book “wonderfully written.”
Whom to believe? Are Weiner and Sittenfeld — one a noted “chick lit” writer and one whose breakout book was anything but — following their own agendas in reviewing Bank’s sophomore effort?
I’d love to hear from anyone out there in EDIWTB readerland who has read The Wonder Spot. Please weigh in.