Spot On

by Nancy Armstrong

Books

Perhaps you think "brainy chick lit" is an oxymoron along the lines of "work party" or "a just war." You're entitled to your opinion, certainly, but don't let it keep you away from Melissa Bank's fiction. In The Wonder Spot, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to her debut, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Bank does herself one better. Following the same format — "chapters" that are almost short stories unto themselves, tackling one subject or aspect of the heroine's life — but keeping her focus narrow and her delving deep, Bank allows us to live the life of Sophie Applebaum along with her. From Hebrew school in Surrey, Pa., at age 12 to the "not-very-good" college in rural New York and through a series of jobs, flats and relationships in 1980s Manhattan, Sophie stumbles near-cluelessly onto and off of the stages of her life, slowly figuring out the obvious (to us) answers to the riddles of experience. Yet Bank never ridicules her protagonist: With the tenderness of a mother and the sharp tongue of an eccentric aunt, Bank makes gentle fun of Sophie as she is drawn into her first one-night stand ("What I thought was: We are falling in love."), but then imbues her with insight that could come only from innocence as she becomes frustrated with her first romance ("it seemed to me just then that our lives were smaller than they had to be. We were a check split down the middle."). Bank's smarts are vastly different from Sophie's, but both should be fun to hear.

Melissa Bank reads and signs Wed., June 15, 7:30 p.m., free, Barnes & Noble, 720 Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr, 610-520-0355.