Ten top books for the broken-hearted

Susie Steiner is the author of Missing, Presumed. One of her top ten books for the broken-hearted, as shared at the Guardian:

The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank

This collection of linked short stories spent 16 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list after it was published in 1999. Loosely at its centre is Jane Rosenal, a wisecracking single New Yorker who is suffering at the dating frontline and in some senses this book is a riposte to The Rules – a brutal and demoralising dating manual published five years earlier. Though shoehorned into the chick-lit genre by some reviewers, and inevitably lined up alongside Bridget Jones, Bank was also likened to Lorrie Moore for the gentle ironies in her literary style. Truly wonderful.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue