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First published by Viking 1999
Published in Penguin Books 2000
Reissued in this edition 2015
Copyright © Melissa Bank, 1999
All rights reserved
Cover art by Genevieve Dionne
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Some of the stories in this book first appeared in the following publications: “Advanced Beginners” (as “Lucky You”) in The North American Review, “The Floating House” in Another Chicago Magazine; “My Old Man” (as “Dennis the Menace and Mr. Wilson”) in Chicago Tribune; “The Best Possible Light” in Other Voices; and “The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing” in Zoetrope: All-Story.
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint “One Art” from The Complete Poems 1927 – 1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.; and “The Commuter’s Lament or A Close Shave”: by Norman B. Colp. Copyright © Norman B. Colp, 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.
These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-141-90963-9
TO MY REAL-LIFE GIRL GUIDES
Adrienne Brodeur, Carole DeSanti,
Carol Fiorino, Molly Friedrich,
Judy Katz, and Anna Wingfield
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
“One Art,” from The Complete Poems 1927–1979, by Elizabeth Bishop
Thanks to Alexandra Babanskyj, Barbara Grossman, Susan Petersen, and Paul Slovak at Viking; to Francis Coppola, Karla Eoff, Alicia Patterson, Samantha Schnee, and Joanna Yas at Zoetrope: All Story; to Kathy Minton and Isaiah Sheffer at Selected Shorts; to Lucy Childs and Paul Cirone at the Aaron Priest Literary Agency; to my trusty readers—Michael Atmore, Joan Bank, Donna Barba, Margery Bates, Scott Bryson, Arthur Chernoff, Paul Cody, Jane Dickinson, Hunter Hill, Mitch Karsh, Ken Katz, Peter Landesman, Alex Moon, Jane Moriarty, Sylvie Rabineau, Michael Ruby, Oren Rudavsky, Julie Schumacher, Sandy Stillman, Joe Sweet, John Szalay, Jack Wetling, Judy Wohl—and especially Garth Wingfield, who helped me with every version of every story; and, finally, thanks to my brother, Andrew Bank, for listening to all the boring details, making me laugh every day, and always coming to the rescue.
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
FOLLOW PENGUIN