The difference between Melissa Bank and the average piece of chick lit is like the difference between filet mignon and hamburger.
Bank's latest is a series of connected stories about the adventures and misadventures of a middle class Jewish girl, Sophie Appelbaum, as she goes from adolescence to maturity.
Sophie's story begins when she is twelve years old, being dragged from the beach on the nicest day of the year to a bat mitzvah. Living in suburban comfort in Surrey, PA ("I never heard of Surrey." "That's okay, nobody's ever heard of it."), making friends in school, going off to college (nobody has ever heard of her college either), and living in awful sublets in New York City while she tries to figure out what to do with her life.
Sophie is not a superstar, just a nice girl, who muddles along, working at jobs she doesn't much like, meeting and loving mysteriously unsuitable men, and interacting with her family, which includes two brothers, each real and convincing, her parents, and her cold, withholding grandmother. When her grandmother sees Sophie as a child, she remarks, "I don't blame the children, I blame the parents."
Yet the heroine is a happy, generous and robust character. She makes and loses friends, loves and loses men, but preserves her honesty and her sense of humor. Somewhere on her journey, she comes to terms with her losses and her strengths, and emerges with her equilibrium intact.
Bank writes with charm and wit. Her dialogue is especially astute, and all the characters, even the unsuitable men and the cold grandmother, are compassionately but not sentimentally portrayed.
If you liked the Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, you'll enjoy this.
Article comments