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Summary and Reviews of The Girl's Guide To Hunting & Fishing by Melissa Bank

The Girl's Guide To Hunting & Fishing by Melissa Bank

The Girl's Guide To Hunting & Fishing

by Melissa Bank
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (10):
  • First Published:
  • Jun 1, 1999, 274 pages
  • Paperback:
  • May 2000, 288 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

One of the most eagerly anticipated books of the season - funny, sexy, wise fiction from the freshest new voice in women's writing.

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

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.

Newsweek
Captivating.

Los Angeles Times
Bank writes like John Cheever, but funnier.

The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
... [a] charming, funny collection of seven linked fictions ...

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.

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  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

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  • Free books to read and review (US only)
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