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by Caitlin Moran
What do you do in your teenage years when you realize what your parents taught you wasn't enough? You must go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroes - and build yourself.
It's 1990. Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there's no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde - fast-talking, hard-drinking Gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer - like Jo in Little Women, or the Bröntes - but without the dying young bit.
By sixteen, she's smoking cigarettes, getting drunk and working for a music paper. She's writing pornographic letters to rock-stars, having all the kinds of sex with all kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less.
But what happens when Johanna realizes she's built Dolly with a fatal flaw? Is a box full of records, a wall full of posters, and a head full of paperbacks, enough to build a girl after all?
Imagine The Bell Jar written by Rizzo from Grease. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant, and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as only Caitlin Moran could tell it.
"Starred Review. Hilarious autobiographical fiction debut for Britain's Lena Dunham." - Kirkus
"In her first novel, comedian Moran's (How to Be a Woman, 2012) characters are huggable and aggressively real; her setting - 1990s Wolverhampton and London - touchable; and her depiction of growing up well worth reading. One heartily hopes there's more where this came from." - Booklist
"Unfortunately, Johanna's voice feels forced, and her exploits seem to surpass what might have been believable chutzpah." - Publishers Weekly
"Brilliantly observed, thrillingly rude and laugh-out-loud funny." - Helen Fielding, author of Mad About the Boy and Bridget Jones's Diary
"I have so much love for Caitlin Moran." - Lena Dunham
This information about How to Build a Girl was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Caitlin Moran was named the Columnist of the Year by the British Press Awards in 2010, and Critic and Interviewer of the Year in 2011 for her work at the Times of London. You can follow Caitlin on Twitter @caitlinmoran.
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