The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing is a 1999 collection of linked short stories by Melissa Bank

Melissa Bank

Melissa Bank is an American author. Along with English author Helen Fielding, Bank is credited with giving rise to the Chick Lit genre. She has published two novels, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing and The Wonder Spot, which have been translated into over thirty languages...

. The stories follow the main character Jane Rosenal, starting with her life at age 14.

The Girls' Guide to Hunting And Fishing spent 16 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. It was a bestseller in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Bank writes like John Cheever

John Cheever

John William Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy,...

, but funnier." Newsweek critic Yahlin Chang wrote, "Bank draws exquisite portraits of loneliness, and she can do it in a sentence." Others placed Ms. Bank in the school of restraint exemplified by Hemingway

Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was an American writer and journalist.Hemingway may also refer to:*Hemingway , a surname and list of people with that name*Hemingway , a Marvel Comics character*Hemingway, South Carolina...

 and Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....

.

Stories

• "Advanced Beginners"
• "The Floating House"
• "My Old Man"
• "The Best Possible Light"
• "The Worst Thing a Suburban Girl Could Imagine"
• "You Could be Anyone"
• "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing"

Adaptations

Two films are based on part or all of this work:

• The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing — Francis Ford Coppola
  Francis Ford Coppola
  Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
  
   (who has the rights to the title and short story of that name) and American Zoetrope
  American Zoetrope
  American Zoetrope is a studio founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Founded on December 12, 1969, American Zoetrope was an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of HDTV...
  
   are developing a film which is adapted from the book's last short story.
• Suburban Girl (2008)