The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

Summary (from the publisher): Generous-hearted, smartly comic, and wickedly insightful, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing 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. What is love, she wonders, as she scrutinizes the wiles and ways of older, possibly wiser women; casts a questioning eye toward various species of couples; and holds out her wrists for a spritz of perfume from her beautiful boss...How do you find it (and keep it) - and above all, who makes the rules?

 

In the throes of a budding romance, Jane repairs to the self-help shelves to take a sojourn with authors Bouncy Bonnie and Blown-Dry Faith, who whisper in her ear and tell her what they rules are - in their terms. "Wear your hair long...Don't say 'I love you' first...Don't accept a date less than four days in advance..." and above all, "Don't be funny!...Men like femininity," Faith says, crossing her legs. "Humor isn't feminine..."

 

When she is swept off her feet by an older man and into a Fitzgeraldesque world of cocktail parties, country houses, and rules-that-were-made-to-be-broken, Jane learns what it means when her lover says he wants "to everything" with her, and the stakes become far too high.

 

A floating house in St. Croix (after a soul-stripping game of strip poker) has its own lesson to teach, as do a couple of sexy, come-and-go boyfriends, a drama around a Greenwich Village kitchen table, and a never-ending bloop-yatty-bloop wedding reception. Finally, when Jane has gone in all the wrong directions (but for all the right reasons), she learns not only when to fish and when to cut bait, but who really makes the rules.

 

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing reflects the quest of our time: how to love and understand one another better than we do and how to love in ways that allow us to be most fully ourselves. Its heroine, crackling with life, energy, and spirit, is a vivid and wise guide to these lessons. It's no wonder that a growing number of readers, from the Midwest to midtown Manhattan, have come to Melissa Bank's work with a sense of instant recognition and gratitude for what she has to give us all.

 

Review: In this novel narrator Jane Rosenal navigates the trials of love, relationships, jobs - all the 'hunting and fishing' of a woman's life. In the opening chapter, Jane is just a teenager, keenly observing her brother home from college with his girlfriend, but quickly the narrative jumps forward in time to see Jane with her first serious boyfriend, dating a much older man, struggling with a difficult boss, and navigating through her life.

 

I was very nearly instantly taken with the author's writing style; many sentences captured fully feelings I have had or described exactly types of people I have met. Such as Jane's experience with large breasts as a young teenager: "My breasts seemed to say something about me that I didn't want said. My Achilles' heel, they put me in constant danger of humiliation" (21). Or Jane's description of her boyfriend's glamorous ex-girlfriend and her new lover: "Then I look up and see Yves and Bella at the railing of the veranda, holding hands. When they wave to us it is like seeing a photograph move" (52). I was particularly amused by Jane's tongue-in-cheek description of her ex-boyfriend who is working as a bartender "just while he decided whether to open a restaurant of his own, direct movies, or apply to medical school again" (153). And later struck by her succinct description of her illness: "Too late, you realize that your body was perfect - every healthy body is" (218).

 

And yet, despite the beauty of individual fragments, that's exactly the way this novel read to me - as fragments that never formed a coherent whole. In fact, the book reads instead as a string of short stories that jump in time and focus, only linked by all sharing Jane as a narrator. That is, except for one seemingly random section, that is narrated by a neighbor in her building. I found that section intriguing but could never make out exactly why it was included or how it could possibly relate to Jane's story.

 

In short, I connected with the writing style and sentiments of the main character, but was thrown by the disparate nature of the sections of the book. I do love the title and its insinuation that Jane is writing her own guide to life through her own personal trials and errors.

 

Stars: 3.5