New York Times, 8/5/2022
Despite the fact that critics compared her spare, exacting language to that of any number of male writers, including Hemingway and Salinger — The Los Angeles Times called it “like John Cheever, only funnier” — her book was quickly corralled into the growing herd of woman-centered fiction derisively labeled “chick lit.”
Given the moment, in the go-girl late 1990s, perhaps it was inevitable. “Ally McBeal” was a hit for Fox. “Sex and the City” debuted on HBO in 1998, the same year Helen Fielding’s novel “Bridget Jones’ Diary” was published.
Reviewers and fans eagerly tied Ms. Bank’s book to Ms. Fielding’s; the two even appeared on a panel together at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, entitled “What Single Women Want.”
Discerning critics, though, saw more difference than similarity, especially in Ms. Bank’s ability to convey generosity and sympathy.
“Fielding’s novel was a satirical, one-joke stunt,” Rebecca Mead wrote in The New Yorker in 1999. “Bank’s is a far more subtle piece of work, which achieves even more than it aims to.”
Ms. Bank followed “The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing” with a similarly linked set of stories, “The Wonder Spot,” in 2005. It did not sell nearly as well as “The Girls’ Guide,” but many critics considered it a much better book.
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