Caitlin Moran (born Catherine Elizabeth Moran; 5 April 1975) is an English broadcaster, TV critic and columnist at The Times, where she writes three columns a week: one for the Saturday Magazine, a TV review column, and the satirical Friday column "Celebrity Watch". Moran is British Press Awards (BPA) Columnist of the Year for 2010, and both BPA Critic of the Year 2011, and Interviewer of the Year 2011. She lives in London with her husband and two daughters.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 Brontës—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 the 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?
I really had to let this one sink in before writing my review. I am still not really sure. I did enjoy parts of the book. The struggle to become an adult and get to do something you like. The way Johanna approaches things and think things out trying to make a better future for herself and her family. The manner in how she finds her own way to get what she wants. I really enjoyed that part. Still I was left with some anger and annoyance with her. I did not really enjoy what she felt she had to do to to get the attention she wanted. I do think the story is a clear one about the insecurities a teenager can experience.
How to Build a Girl
Author: Caitlin Moran
Publisher: Harper
Pages: 352
Format: ARC
ISBN-10: 0062335995
ISBN-13: 9780062335999
Harper: eBook | Hardcover | Audiobook
2 reacties
Write reactiesI can understand your feeling (even though I loved this one). I definitely was thinking, "where the heck are her parents?!" during large portions of the book!
ReplyI’ve heard mostly good things about this book but the negatives are almost all along the same lines!
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