Last month I mentioned the war between authors Jennifer Weiner and Curtis Sittenfeld. I was fascinated: they spent more time reviewing each other's personalities and genre definitions than each other's books. And it was so damn circular:
- Melissa Bank wrote The Wonder Spot.
- Curtis Sittenfeld reviewed The Wonder Spot and said it tried to be Literature but it was just chick lit.
- Jennifer Weiner reviewed Sittenfeld's review and said Sittenfeld's own book, Prep, tried to be Literature but it was just chick lit.
(Jennifer Weiner, btw, writes chick lit.)
I won't review Weiner's review of Sittenfeld's review of Bank's book. That would be meta-meta-(meta?)-review, and Egging On Authors Behaving Badly besides. Instead I decided to read all three books.
First up: Wonder Spot
The Wonder Spot is a series of chapters in the life of Sophie. We first meet her at age 12, an ordinary girl growing up outside Philadelphia; the book ends with her near 40 in Manhattan. And that's about it. Banks drags us through Sophie's life, detail by detail, occasionally fast-forwarding a few years. Bank writes well, and I smiled at the occasional turn of phrase, but Sophie is most interesting early on, as a child; the college and adult chapters blur together. You can pick up the book at any point without losing the thread (or worrying that you've missed something).Introducing... Generic Girl
It's hard to get a sense of Sophie as a distinct personality. Her voice, bland as it is, becomes familiar; as do her vital stats and family network. But there's no distinctive pattern of thought, nothing unique in her style of story telling. Only the external details (e.g. people's names) tell the reader that it's still Sophie speaking. There's no distinguishing characteristic giving a sense of recognition in each new section: "Yes! That's Sophie!" Nor a sense of "Oh, that's changed! This is Sophie grown up!"A random walk
There's not really a plot, more a random walk through Sophie's life. That's a perfectly OK form, but to pull it off, there needs to be something keeping the reader engaged. Something like:- An interesting personality
- Character growth
- Atmosphere
- Unusual setting/circumstances
- A series of vignettes that capture truly fascinating moments
- A series of vignettes that build on each other's events and symbols to create a larger narrative.
Sophie's lack of growth left me disappointed with the ending. By growth, I don't necessarily mean "improvement"; just that she sounds exactly the same (same voice, emotions, style of relationships) at 40 as she did as 12. In the final chapter, she's supposed to have found her wonder spot. But the section's only 7 pages long--and Sophie sounds 12. No more or less sure of herself, no more mature, no more distinct a personality. It's hard to believe in the passage of years since the previous chapter, let alone believe in any momentous personal change in Sophie.
Sittenfeld says she's disappointed by the predictability of Sophie's finding "11th-hour love". My disappointment is that the 11th-hour love affair substitutes for character development. It's as if Banks thinks "Is she alone at the end?" is all the reader needs to know. The flat ending leaves me with no urge to speculate (who is Sophie at 40? will this one last? has she really found her wonder spot?). Instead, it feels like just another episode in Sophie's span.
Chick lit?
I read Sittenfeld's review after writing my own, and was surprised at how often I agreed with her. Not on all points though, and I'm not sure about Sittenfeld's definition of chick lit.Sittenfeld argues that chick lit's "appeal relies... on how closely readers relate to its protagonist." That jives with some of my feelings on chick lit. But in Wonder Spot, we see Sophie in a range of situations. Unlike a chick lit novel taking place within a single social circle and neighborhood, I imagine some readers could identify with some of Wonder Spot due to sheer variety of situations. So I'd say Wonder Spot's problem is more a failure of characterization; a focus on the surface; and especially a lack of character growth--all of which can happen in any genre, not just chick lit.
And again unlike most chick lit, Wonder Spot takes place over 25 years. It's a shame that that span of time isn't reflected in Sophie's narration. Sittenfeld seems to somewhat agree, so perhaps my quibble with her definition is all semantics: "Good novels allow us to feel what the characters feel, no matter how dissimilar their circumstances and ours."
I'm told Bank's debut, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing was a lot more creative and readable. The Guide is a collection of short stories, and I can believe Bank might fare better in shorter form. But give The Wonder Spot a miss.What would Yoda do?
So much for reading a book because of a flame war. Maybe this is a mini-lesson in motivation: "Read for the right reasons, you must." So should I still read Sittenfeld and Weiner? On the plus side, I agreed with a lot of Sittenfeld's review--though that doesn't mean I'd enjoy her fiction. On the minus side, the premise of Weiner's book sounds banal--I know that's just the cover copy, but it's not enticing.Grade: C-
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