The Girl's Guide To Hunting & Fishing: Summary and book reviews of The Girl's Guide To Hunting & Fishing by Melissa Bank, plus links to an excerpt from The Girl's Guide To Hunting & Fishing and a biography of Melissa Bank.

I don't admit to myself what I'm doing when I put my bike helmet on and ride over to the bookstore a few blocks away. I pretend that maybe I'm just getting another Edith Wharton novel. But I bypass fiction and find Self-Help. I think Self-Help? If I could help myself, I wouldn't be here. There are stacks and stacks of How to Meet and Marry Mr. Right, and I take my copy up to the counter as furtively as if it were a girdle or a vibrator ... With a steadily growing cadre of readers who delight in her smartly comic and insightful writing, Melissa Bank is an event waiting to happen. The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing explores the life lessons of Jane, the contemporary American Everywoman who combines the charm of Bridget Jones, the vulnerability of Ally McBeal, and the wit of Lorrie Moore. As she works her way from defiant teenager to reluctant career girl, growing older and getting smarter, Jane maneuvers her way through love, sex, relationships, and the occasional perils of the workplace. She reluctantly succumbs to the questionable advice offered in a pop-psych book entitled How to Meet and Marry Mr. Right. Accompanied at every turn by the ear-whispering authors (who bear an uncanny resemblance to two popular, hateful high school acquaintances) Jane makes a series of dating decisions that lead her in the right direction -- but for the wrong reasons. Wise, poignant, and full of the kind of laugh-out-loud insight you just have to share with your best friend, Melissa Bank is the kind of writer readers have been waiting for: an original voice telling a universal story through characters we all love and recognize.

Media Reviews

The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt ... [a] charming, funny collection of seven linked fictions ...   Los Angeles Times Bank writes like John Cheever, but funnier.   Newsweek Captivating.   Entertainment Weekly In this swinging, funny, and tender study of contemporary relationships, Bank refutes once and for all the popular notion of neurotic thirtysomething single women.   Kirkus Reviews A smart, ruefully funny chronicle of a modern young woman's search for love .... Bank's debut is a model of well-crafted narrative building to a thoughtful, hopeful conclusion. Bank has created a delightful heroine who deserves her happy ending even though any reader who has really been paying attention to the sharp, unsentimental details knows that all happy endings are provisional.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Batti
The Girls' Guide to Hunting & Fishing
I loved reading it. I am 50 and been married for almost 30 years and yet I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's for anybody regardless of their age or situation, I believe. I cannot wait to get my hands on "The Wonder Spot".

Rated of 5 by Amber
The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing.
This book was ok. I enjoyed it until it switched to that crazy chapter about Nina, which was completely confusing because it too was written in first person. It seemed pointless to the story of Jane, and there were all these charaters, and their...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Lauren Hanley
I find Melissa Bank's novel as comforting as a post breakup bowl of ice cream. I see alot of myself in the storys of Jane when she was younger. I too still have a lot to learn about life seeing as I am only 17. I've read the book about 23 times,...   Read More

Rated of 5 by kelly
I truly enjoyed this book. A few of the stories were quite exceptional but I most enjoyed the ones involving the older man. Bank writes sharply and I found myself often wondering how she came up with so many of the clever phrases she wrote. I...   Read More

Rated of 5 by nora
There's no denying we've all experienced every thought, feeling, embarassment, yearning, sadness and elation that Jane has. A light, humorous and moving account of every young woman's life. If you like finishing a book with a smile on your face,...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Julien
This book deserves much more than the 'Bridget Jones' reference - this one is a piece of art. It is written with a style (light to read but so dense in unspoken content) that belongs to American classics, and echoes far beyond the story of the...   Read More

...4 More Reader Reviews

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