Synopses & Reviews
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. 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?
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
Review
“Wonderfully wise and flat-out hilarious.” People, Book of the Week
Review
“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
Review
“I have so much love for Caitlin Moran.” Lena Dunham
Review
“A smart, splendid, laugh-out-loud-funny novel.” Boston Globe
Review
“A feminist coming-of-age tale.…Johanna is an irrepressible narrator, telling a mostly-true and funny tale of survival and success.” Washington Post Book World
Review
“Brilliantly observed, thrillingly rude and laugh-out-loud funny.” Helen Fielding, author of Mad About the Boy and Bridget Jones's Diary
Review
“Rallying cries will always have a place in a yet-unfinished movement like feminism, but sometimes storytelling is more effective. The fictional Johanna Morrigan never drops the F-word, but readers can see shes asking all the right questions.” New York Times Book Review
Review
“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
Review
“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
Review
“If anyone knows how to build a girl, it's Moran — she's put adolescence on the page in a book that's humming with authenticity.” NPR Best Book of the Year selection
Review
“A funny, filthy and ultimately touching coming-of-age story.…Raunchy, wry and thoughtful-much like its vivacious heroine.” Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
“Brash, biting, comic…. Less a novelistic rendering of Morans particularly gritty and appealing brand of feminism than an incisive and yet entertaining assessment of class dynamics in post-Thatcher Britain.” Chloe Schama, < i=""> New Republic <>
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 Brontes--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.
Synopsis
Now a major motion picture starring Beanie Feldstein
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 Br ntes--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.
Synopsis
After she shames herself on local television, Johanna Morrigan reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde-- a fast-talking, hard-drinking Gothic hero-- until two years later, while eviscerating bands as a music critic, she realizes she's built Dolly with a fatal flaw.
About the Author
Caitlin Moran's debut book, How to Be a Woman, was an instant New York Times bestseller. How to Build a Girl is her first novel since the one she wrote at fourteen, which doesn't count.