Available:*
Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010108568 | PS3552.A487 W66 2005 | Open Access Book | Creative Book | Searching... |
Searching... | 30000010108569 | PS3552.A487 W66 2005 | Open Access Book | Creative Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Meet Sophie Applebaum: enchanting, complex, fascinating. We follow her to school, through college, to her first job with terrible typing skills, through to the realisation that work isn't fulfilment, that your parents aren't quite what you thought and that Mr Right is sometimes only alright...
Author Notes
Melissa Bank won the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction. She has published stories in the Chicago Tribune, including Zoetrope, The North American Review, and Other Voices and Ascent. Her work has also been heard on "Selected Shorts" on National Public Radio. She holds an MFA from Cornell University and divides her time between New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews 3
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fans of the megasuccessful Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, rejoice. Bank is back with an equally entertaining first novel, starring Sophie Applebaum, a sarcastic, self-deprecating middle child from a suburban Jewish family who moves from a fish-out-of-water adolescence to a how-did-I-get-here adulthood. Likable Sophie's (mis)adventures in life and love include an attempt to use lyrics from Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me, Babe to argue against the necessity of attending Hebrew school and a penchant for imagining her future life with men she barely knows (a potential beau's ability to cook fish becomes a metaphor for the hard things we will face together). A slightly cynical yet romantic optimism grounds Sophie and gives Bank plenty of opportunities for clever quips: cribbing a career objective in publishing from a rEsumE handbook, Sophie diligently copies exercises found in the long-overdue library book 20th Century Typing, including Know Your Typewriter, and she agrees to a blind date with a pediatric surgeon by noting that she possesses her own pediatric heart. But this isn't just another urban chick-lit bildungsroman; Bank's work also features the intriguing transformations of the other Applebaums: a grandmother's slip into senility, Sophie's mother's dip into infidelity, a brother's turn toward Orthodox Judaism. Through it all, Sophie never quite escapes the sense of being a solid trying to do a liquid's job, a feeling as frightening as it is familiar to those struggling to achieve a grownup self-awareness. Engrossing, engaging it's a wonderful return for Bank. 12-city author tour. Agent, Molly Friedrich. (June 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Bank's debut, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing 0 (1999), was a standout in a genre that was finding its footing at the time; six years later, her follow-up should also gain her both attention and acclaim for the stark frankness with which it looks at modern relationships. Unlike the polished, ambitious heroines of more typical fare, Sophie Appelbaum isn't especially driven or lovelorn; she's an astute observer but often finds herself, by choice or by accident, in the background. When readers first meet Sophie, she's 12 and a reluctant attendee of Hebrew class; she's soon ditching to hang out in the bathroom with a girl who is even more rebellious. In New York, with a college degree but no typing skills, Sophie drifts from residence to residence until she finally lands a job as an editorial assistant working for one of her brother's ex-girlfriends, but this seemingly ideal first job doesn't lead to the promised publishing career. There are men in Sophie's life, too, but none of them seems to be the "one." Bank resists the urge to overromanticize modern-day relationships, recognizing the ordinary, mundane side of life and love. --Kristine Huntley Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Pitched as both literary fiction and high-class chick-lit, this follow-up to Bank's blockbuster The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing features feckless Sophie Applebaum of Surrey, PA. With a 12-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
