The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
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Product Description
Hailed by critics as the debut of a major literary voice, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing has captivated readers and dominated bestseller lists. Generous-hearted and wickedly insightful, it maps the progress of Jane Rosenal as she sets out on a personal and spirited expedition through the perilous terrain of sex, love, relationships, and the treacherous waters of the workplace. With an unforgettable comic touch, Bank skillfully teases out universal issues, puts a clever, new spin on the mating dance, and captures in perfect pitch what it's like to be a young woman coming of age in America today.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
Read it for the writing
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Comment:
My daughter gave me this book because I was writing a novel at the time. I was feeling cocky about my writing ability until I read Girls Guide. The woman can write. It is a book about nothing and has one chapter that has nothing to do with the rest of the book. However, it may have because the book is about nothing...so who knows? Her style will pull you through the nothingness with a smile on your face. A pleasure to read. The Wonder Place is simply more of the same with some story lines rolled in.
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Summary:
The Girls Guide
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Comment:
This book was not what I thought it was going to be. It talked analytically and figuratively. I did not find a point to the book until the very END. One chapter seemed like it didn't even fit.
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Summary:
What is the chapter in the middle all about?
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Comment:
I thought the book was OK, as it held my attention. Jane is definetly funny and quick witted, but HELLO, the middle chapter is completely annoying to me. Even if it were a collection of short stories (which, by the way, the book is advertised as a NOVEL), the compilation would still be in consistent and non-thematic. While funny, I just feel that I finsihed this book more for the sake of HOPING something would tie together, but sadly, it did not. Speaking of sad, I could have done without death and disease in this "hilarious" "novel". Writers: Beginning, middle, end. Simplistic, but yet so far from grasp. Geez.
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Summary:
a very good debut
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Comment:
Melissa Bank's debut book was on the shelf at the family activity room at the hospital, where I was spending long hours and forgot to bring a book of my own. I took it to pass the time, because I did not have a choice really, but I was pleasantly surprised.
"The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" is a collection of short stories, rather loosely connected through a main character/narrator, Jane Rosenal. Jane epitomizes a modern girl and young woman, and her problems are quite typical: jiggling family life, boyfriends, friends and job, she struggles with her - sometimes difficult and unexpected - emotions. She is from New Jersey and grew up there, but lives in New York City, putting together a career in book editing. Since adolescence, she possesses a sharp sense of observation, quick wit and a good deal of self-criticism, at the same time being far from ideal. But indeed, although funny and light read, these stories have a deeper meaning, definitely it is not a Bridget Jones type of book. Especially Jane's relationship with her father is worth noticing - but many others too, with her brother Henry and with her twenty years older father-figure boyfriend Archie included.
The stories are told from different perspectives, sometimes Jane is the narrator, sometimes the narrator is objective and Jane is one of the protagonists, and in one of the stories (a very good one) only mentions her as a neighbor of the family which it describes. It is clear that the author experimented with styles and tried to figure out which feels best, but this is forgivable in a debut, although makes the book a bit incoherent. But it is a good debut and makes one anticipate Bank's next work to be worth reading as well.
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Summary:
Confusing and disjointed
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Comment:
First, the title is misleading. It's more about hunting and fishing for husbands as opposed to the more literal meaning. The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fish, said to be the first "chick lit" novel, is really a series of essays focusing on a character named Jane Rosenal as she navigates her way through childhood, adolescence, and later adulthood.
There are great lapses in time between the stories, and they're not all put in chronological order, which makes me think that the stories are ordered according to some common theme--though I never really figured out what that theme was. I mean, I get that the book is about dating, but it was really confusing to be in a lot of ways. In addition, Jane's relationship with the much older editor was a little bit disconcerting to me. Also, there was one story that seemed really out of place: I got the impression that it was told from Jane's point of view after she'd had children and they'd grown up. But I couldn't figure out how that story fit into the general course of the book.
The title of the book comes from a story placed at the end of the book, where Jane begins to date a guy she meets at a wedding. Se's so caught up in playing the dating "game by "The Rules," that she doesn't allow the guy to see who she really is. The book is well written, but there's a lot which didn't make sense to me and there didn't seem to be a "plot," so to speak, which is why I only gave this book three stars.
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