How to Build a Girl - Hardcover

Moran, Caitlin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062335979 ISBN 13: 9780062335975

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2014

Synopsis

The New York Times bestselling author hailed as "the UK's answer to Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, and Lena Dunham all rolled into one" (Marie Claire) makes her fiction debut with a hilarious yet deeply moving coming of age novel.

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.

About this title

Review

"Rowdy and fearless ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways.... Ms. Moran is often compared to Tina Fey and Lena Dunham, which is fair so far as it goes, though I'd add Amy Winehouse and the early Roseanne Barr to the mix."--Dwight Garner, New York Times

"Vivid and full of truths.... There's a point in midlife, when you're already built, as it were, when the average coming-of-age story starts to feel completely uninteresting. But Moran is so lively, dazzlingly insightful and fun that "How to Build a Girl" transcends any age restrictions."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Wonderfully wise and flat-out hilarious."--People, Book of the Week

"Very funny.... Moran never loses touch with what seemed to me an authentic and believable teenage voice.... The joy of this easy-read novel is not just the scrappy protagonist.... Moran makes strong statements about social inequality and gender throughout."--Ellah Allfrey, NPR's Fresh Air

"I have so much love for Caitlin Moran."--Lena Dunham

"The earnestness with which Johanna goes about constructing a new persona gives the novel an almost irresistible verve, and the reader continues to root for her even during the most embarrassing episodes."--The New Yorker

"A smart, splendid, laugh-out-loud-funny novel."--Boston Globe

"A feminist coming-of-age tale.... Johanna is an irrepressible narrator, telling a mostly-true and funny tale of survival and success."--Joanna Scutts, Washington Post Book World

"Brilliantly observed, thrillingly rude and laugh-out-loud funny."--Helen Fielding, author of Mad About the Boy and Bridget Jones's Diary

"Binge-read all of How To Build a Girl in one sitting. Even missed supper. A first. Rose petals where 'ere you walk, Caitlin."--Nigella Lawson

Book Description

The number 1 Sunday Times bestseller, the debut grown-up novel from Caitlin Moran, bestselling author of How To Be A Woman...

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0062335979
• ISBN 13: 9780062335975
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 341