The Wonder Spot

by Melissa Bank

Found this at the GT bookstore while I was supposed to be shopping for a Father's Day present. Still haven't gotten the Father's Day present... Can I reset the goal to Labor-Day-Present-for-Dad?

Anyway, I think this book is my first foray into post-chick lit. It's what happens when chick lit grows up. Yes it's still fun and snarky, but not traditional chick lit, where the girl at least gets wiser, if not the man. For at least half the book the girl's already got perspective, it's just figuring what to do after that... When you realize that a breakup or job loss isn't the end of the world, or the end of the line, and that both dating and single life have their own precious horrors. It's past the ennui of "what do I want to do with my life?" and into "wow, I've been doing this for years, whether I really meant to or not".

I really liked the structure of this book - a bunch of short stories starring the main character. And I confess, I think I read one (or an excerpt of one) in a Cosmo or Glamour or something. But I like the idea of picking out bits of a person's life for a story, and not really having to wade through all the filler. Wait, do all lives have filler?

Anyway, what I didn't like about this book, or at least, what it's made me think about is the theme of the single life. The book follows her dating life through a series of men, and series of friends, and when you look at your life that way, as a series of men, it's a little strange. I mean, in traditional chick lit, the girl gets the guy or a guy, or friends or career or family, or there's a sense of culmination. The life proposed in the book is one of a string of really great boyfriends (and sometimes great family and friends, but ones who often let you down). Is that enough? I mean, I think what's been sold as this Sex in the City lifestyle is that in general, you'll get The Guy. A guy that you love and is perfect for you, even if it takes a damn long time. This book is about about dating forever, with no culmination, no real Aha! moment, or actually, a life with a whole lot of them that turn out not to be what you'd hoped after awhile. And maybe that's why my Sunday has been a little depressing... Don't get me wrong, the book was fun to read and made me think, but the end of the book seems to indicate more of the same kinda got me down.

"Up until that moment, I'd been at the earliest stage of love, when you feel it will turn you into the person you want to be. Now his gentle voice and sage advice took me to a later stage: I felt I needed to pretend to be a better person than I was so that he'd keep loving me. This was hard because it made me hate him."

"My mother was still describing the portrait's greatness when my grandmother returned with three tiny glasses of sherry on a silver tray.

As my mother and I took ours, my grandmother said, 'Pay attention,' and 'Be careful,' as though we'd already spilled a first glass of sherry and giving us a second was against her better judgement...

My grandmother said, 'I told Dan that you'd be here,' as though his call from Chicago had required special planning and hard-to-find equipment, as though his call was a special favor that we hadn't been gracious enough to receive.

I had a brainstorm: 'We could call him back.'

My grandmother seemed not to hear; her point was not that we talk to my uncle but that we'd missed talking to him."

"According to Jack, all of Rebecca's boyfriends were black, which seemed, if not racist, race-ish, and I wondered, Why the black guys, Becky? just as I wondered in the case of my friend Alex, Why the Asian women? Or in my own case, Why the pirates?"