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 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.
Caitlin Moran’s debut book, How to Be a Woman, was an instant New York Times bestseller, with more than one million copies distributed worldwide. Her first novel, How to Build a Girl, received widespread acclaim, and she adapted it into a major motion picture starring Beanie Feldstein and Emma Thompson. As a twice-weekly columnist at The Times of London, Moran has won Columnist of the Year seven times. She lives in London.
Q: Can men and women be friends and nothing more? A: 1) Yes, and 2) Da-doy. As a cultural talking point, it’s kinda cute when Harry Burns says they can’t, but way less cute when Jeremy Renner apparently agrees—and seems, further, to believe that a girl with male friends must just be a slut, right? […]
Side effects of reading the following books may include feeling like you can climb a mountain, the urge to call your best friend immediately, and the binge-purchase of copies for everyone you love. It’s impossible—IMPOSSIBLE—to read them and not look at the world with fresh eyes and a hopeful heart. Read with caution, and abandon. Mostly […]
The idea that readers can’t identify with unlikable characters is hilariously, fatally flawed. In pursuit of a good story, we’ve rooted for the success (or at least avidly followed the story) of psychopaths, rabbits, the color red, unapologetic pedophiles, and bees. If you stick googly eyes on a rock and give it a purpose (to kill all the other […]
Because the holidays weren’t difficult enough, man invented the Secret Santa exchange, that age-old pastime in which you must procure gifts for good friends, curmudgeonly coworkers, and casual acquaintances alike. It can be tricky to pick up something you know will be a hit. But it can be done, with the safest bet of all: a […]
I know, I know, EVERY month is an amazing month for YA, but this one is especially bursting with red-letter release days, of heart-wracking love stories, a backstage pass into YA heaven, a gripping meditation on bullying and suicide, and one book that will have you snort laughing in public then reading every other line […]
