[1][2] Her father, Arnold, was a neurologist who died during his late fifties of leukemia, a condition he concealed for almost ten years;[2][3] her mother, Joan (Levine), worked as a teacher.

[1][4] She then worked in publishing in New York City, and obtained a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Cornell University in 1987.

[5] Her literary influences included Vladimir Nabokov, John Cheever, Billy Collins, and Grace Paley.

[3] Bank was conferred the Nelson Algren Literary Award in 1993 for her short story Mr. Wilson and Dennis the Menace.

This condition affected her short-term memory and deprived her of the "top 10 to 15% of [her] vocabulary"; she was unable to order information or perform sequential thinking.

"[8] Newsweek critic Yahlin Chang wrote, "Bank draws exquisite portraits of loneliness, and she can do it in a sentence.

[1][2] It took her five years to write the book,[2] which did not fare as well as The Girls' Guide in terms of sales but was regarded by critics as the superior of the two works.