Bank, Melissa 1961–

PERSONAL: Born 1961. Education: William Smith College, B.A., 1982; Cornell University, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Viking, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014. E-mail—info@melissabank.com.

CAREER: Writer. Has worked as an advertising copywriter.

AWARDS, HONORS: Nelson Algren Award for short fiction, 1993.

WRITINGS:

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing (short stories), Viking (New York, NY), 1999.

The Wonder Spot (novel), Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor of short stories to periodicals, including the Chicago Tribune, Ascent, North American Review, Other Voices, and Zoetrope.

ADAPTATIONS: The Wonder Spot has been made into an audiobook, Penguin Audio: Books on Tape (New York, NY), 2005.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A novel and a screenplay of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing for director Francis Ford Coppola.

SIDELIGHTS: Navigating the shoals of the dating scene occupies the narrators of most of the short stories in author Melissa Bank's first book, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Bank's alter ego, Jane Rosenal—who works in advertising just like the author—narrates five of the seven stories in the collection. In "Advanced Beginners," she is a fourteen-year-old girl watching the train wreck her older brother is making of his current relationship. In "The Floating House," the grown up Jane survives a psychologically taxing Caribbean vacation with an unworthy suitor. Two stories—"My Old Man" and "The Worst Thing a Suburban Girl Could Imagine"—tell of Jane's relationship with a much older book editor for whom she works as a publishing assistant. He is impotent due to his alcoholism, and the relationship ends badly. In the title story of the collection, Jane is a thirty-five-year-old advertising executive. Upon the urging of a friend, Jane follows the instructions in the self-help manual, How to Meet and Marry Mr. Right, with predictably disastrous results.

Some critics compare Bank to Helen Fielding, a British writer whose Bridget Jones novels mine the same type of romantic material. Bank's work, noted Katie Owen in the Times Literary Supplement, "begs obvious comparison to the Bridget Jones school of writing." Owens added: "But to emphasize [the] similarities would be reductive. Melissa Bank has a strong voice of her own, less slapstick than Helen Fielding, but just as funny." "The revolutionary, exciting part of Girls' Guide," wrote Lisa Schwartzbaum in Entertainment Weekly, "is that Jane learns she doesn't need rules, or wiles, or a slimming wardrobe. Like Bridget Jones, she just needs to be herself and stay in the water. Ditto for Bank, who fishes deep in her literary debut and hooks a winner." Schwartzbaum praised the story collection as a "swinging, funny, and tender study of contemporary relationships." Time contributor Ginia Bellafante averred: "There is an exquisite honesty to Jane's relationships; she suffers plenty, but her stories serve as a testament to the value of living one's life with emotional thriftiness." Writing in News-week, Yahlin Chang noted: "The bottom line is that Bank has written a captivating book, fast and funny with real moments of poignancy."

Bank, a thirty-eight-year-old ad copywriter when Girls' Guide was published, has generated much buzz for the amount of money she was paid for the book—$275,000, which is high for a short story collection by a first-time author—and because moviemaker Francis Ford Coppola has signed her to write a screenplay based on the title story. As for the comparisons to Fielding, Bank stoked the publicity machine herself by appearing with the British author for a talk in New York titled "What Single Girls Want."

Bank's second book, the novel The Wonder Spot, features the narrator Sophie Applebaum. The middle child of three, Sophie has two brothers who stand out in the family more than she does: Jack for his like-ability and Robert for his intellect. Sophie, on the other hand, does not appear to have either of these gifts. The novel focuses on Sophie over two decades as the heroine comes of age and overcomes the feeling that somehow she is inferior to her brothers and others. Along the way, she makes numerous bad impressions, from being late to work and dressing inappropriately for all types of occasions to even painting a portrait of a nude male that emphasizes his genitalia. The reader also follows Sophie through failed love affairs and a series of meaningless jobs. Writing in People, Lisa Ingrassia commented that the author's "casual writing style and snappy dialogue make Sophie's misadventures in womanhood both funny and emotionally resonant." Library Journal contributor Tania Barnes wrote that Sophie "manages … to assert herself as a heroine with a quirky keen eye for human motivation and the absurd."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1999, Marlene Chamberlain, review of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 1259; August 1, 2000, Leah Sparks, review of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 2164.

Entertainment Weekly, June 4, 1999, Lisa Schwartzbaum, review of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 76.

Guardian (London, England), July 19, 1999, Simon Hattenstone, "A Polished Act," p. T4.

Library Journal, October 1, 1999, review of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 49; April 15, 2005, Tania Barnes, review of The Wonder Spot, p. 71.

New Statesman, July 5, 1999, Martyn Bedford, review of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 55.

Newsweek, May 31, 1999, Yahlin Chang, "A Hot Young Writer You Can Bank On," p. 76.

New York Times Book Review, May 30, 1999, Courtney Weaver, review of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 23.

People, June 13, 2005, Lisa Ingrassia, review of The Wonder Spot, p. 47.

Publishers Weekly, March 1, 1999, review of The Girls's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 57; September 6, 1999, p. 38; November 1, 1999, review of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 45.

Time, April 19, 1999, Ginia Bellafante, review of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 78.

Times Literary Supplement, July 2, 1999, Katie Owen, review of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, p. 21.

ONLINE

Melissa Bank Home Page, http://www.melissabank.com (March 22, 2006).