Peach Blossom Spring
- 400 pages
- 14 hours of reading
An epic, powerful and intensely personal debut about war, migration, family, and the search for a place to call home. For fans of PACHINKO, WILD SWANS and ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
Melissa Bank Books
October 11, 1960 – August 2, 2022
Melissa Bank is an American author whose work offers a keen insight into relationships and the search for identity. Her stories and novels explore the complexities of modern life with wit and empathy. Bank masterfully captures the inner lives and outward expressions of her characters, creating narratives that are both humorous and deeply poignant. Her distinctive style is known for its candor and its ability to get to the heart of human experience.
Pocket Penguins: The Worst Thing a Suburban Girl Could Imagine
- 57 pages
- 2 hours of reading
When Penguin published Melissa Bank's debut The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing in 1999, it was an immediate bestseller and was garlanded with praise by critics for its unique, honest and appealing voice. In this piece, Jane tells us about her relationship with a man who will never use her name.
Shannon is 30 and single. When her relationship falters, she moves home to save money. Once home, she is reluctantly drawn into the sometimes infuriating realm of her mother. Life for Shannon takes on the complexities of Flo's life, as mother and daughter struggle to redefine their own boundaries.
After following the advice from a manual called "How to Meet and Marry Mr Right", Jane learns that in love there is neither pattern nor promise. This is a funny collection of connected stories and a portrait of Jane, a woman manoeuvring her way through love, sex and relationships.
The Wonder Spot
- 336 pages
- 12 hours of reading
Meet Sophie Applebaum - as enchanting a heroine as Jane in The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Sophie is an outsider and an inventor of rules, simply because she does not fit into any neat description of who she might be- she's Jewish, but lacks religious feeling; a book-lover but a mediocre student; a loyal friend often unpleasantly surprised and a less-than-devoted employee. She falls in love precipitously but isn't sure whom she should marry - or if she wants to marry at all despite all the family pressures and social clamour on this subject. We follow her to school, through college, to her first job with terrible typing skills, through to the realisation that work isn't fulfilment, that your parents aren't quite what you thought and that Mr. Right is sometimes only all right . . . Readers who loved The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishingwon't be disappointed; this is a sparkling, heartfelt, deeply explorative book characterized, as always, by Melissa Bank's light touch, signature humour, and her vast talent for capturing a moment.