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    How to Build a Girl: A Novel
    How to Build a Girl: A Novel
    How to Build a Girl: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    How to Build a Girl: A Novel

    Written by Caitlin Moran

    Narrated by Louise Brealey

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this audiobook

    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.

    Editor's Note

    Identity crafting...

    Bestselling author Caitlin Moran makes her fiction debut with this coming-of-age tale that’ll resonate with anyone who spent their teenage years trying to craft an identity around records and jeans—though protagonist Johanna takes things quite a bit further.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 23, 2014
    ISBN9780062350817
    Author

    Caitlin Moran

    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.

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    Reviews for How to Build a Girl

    3.5/5

    334 ratings32 reviews

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    • 5/5
      loved it
    • 2/5
      First page - masturbating next to six year old brother. Awful image.
      Book closed
    • 3/5
      I can't decide between 3 stars or 4. So we'll say 3.5. I am unfamiliar with Caitlin Moran, I know the she wrote the book How to be a Woman and is somewhat a feminist activist. I wasn?t sure what to expect from How to Build a Girl, I thought it was biography/social science and it took me by surprise to actually be fiction. Johanna is from a poor family and trying to find herself, she also wants to get laid. She decides to try out a persona she calls Dolly Wilde, who is a cynic music critic and has outrageous conversations about sex.

      I liked a lot about the book, the music mentioned, the attitude towards sex, and the overall coming of age story, but it felt unrealistic coming from a teenager perspective and that is because it isn?t. There are times in the story where Dolly/Johanna explain something and then mention how she sees it in hindsight, yet that isn?t part of the story. We are led to believe the perspective is being told by Johanna at the time it happens. So this just irritated me a bit. My second issue the absurd ideas Johanna has about her self and her role in sex. I get it can take people awhile to figure this out, but Caitlin went to the extreme. Everything else I loved, I laughed out loud at many parts. The plot has a good flow to it and it;s even though this is an extreme version of finding yourself it is relatable.
    • 4/5
      loved it! funny, endearing, awkward and sweet.
    • 5/5
      lovely
    • 2/5
      Where this novel succeeded best was in its depiction of poverty and sibling (particularly brother-sister) devotion. While ambitious, it didn't really work out as a feminist narrative on any level, except to deliver the newsflash that teenaged girls are sexual creatures. The idea that girls build several "selves" out of bits and pieces of their adventures before hitting on the right self, as the annoying and intrusive older second narrator tells us--is this any more of a feminist message than that a girl has one true self and she needs to remain true to her? And can't a girl just have adventures without their having some huge psychic significance and implications for her entire future and identity?

      I was interested in Johanna the budding READER and SCHOLAR far more than the potential of J. the frustrated masturbator. Were these (reader and scholar) discarded pieces of self? Apart from one tear through Adrian Mole (more of a pun, given the circumstances, than a return to avid reading), Johanna goes from reading everything she can get her hands on to reading lousy music fanzines exclusively. Is this a good choice for a writer?

      The construction of the novel is sloppy, and the book seems to be painstakingly and repetitively illustrating one truth (Johanna is leaving behind the best of herself in making Dolly, and making Dolly to fit male standards at that) but ends up asserting something else altogether (Dolly is okay, and contains pieces of Johanna's eventual adult self, but really should be a more polite writer). Unless Johanna is a serious masochist (and we spent a whole chapter finding out otherwise) her commitment to continue "having sex with lots of people" should follow more than one depiction of fictional sex that the poor girl actually enjoyed. The question of birth control is left out of the novel entirely. Is it science fiction?

      I agree with other reviewers who say that Moran just tried to do too much in too few pages. A sexual journey, a musical journey, a journey to a positive body image, a fight with siblings out of poverty, a feminist awakening, a discovery of what real love is all about--every one of these themes was seriously shortchanged.
    • 1/5
      That was... disappointing. Especially, since after the "How to be a woman", which was great! This novel felt like an immitation of the non-fiction memoir-y How to be a woman, without the hilarity and insight. It was just sad really. Or it made me sad. Either way, I was left with a bad experience. The narrator, by the way, was amazing and her accent brilliant! She kind of reminded me of Caitlin Moran herself.
    • 4/5
      Loved it. Made me smile and nod in recognition. I am of the age when lighting a cigarette was both something you could hide behind and pretend you were sophisticated and cool. Caitlin has captured the sweet silliness of being young and wanting to make an impression.
    • 2/5
      Kept me reading, but there's not a lot of depth of subtlety.
    • 3/5
      I had heard so many good things about this book, I had to give it a read. While I understand the praise it has gotten and agree with a lot of it, I think my expectations overshadowed the book for me.How to Build a Girl centers on Johanna Morrigan as she invents a new version of herself that she dubs "Dolly Wilde." Unlike Johanna, who is awkward and chubby and whose family lives on her father's disability benefits, Dolly Wilde is a cool music reviewer who wears all black and is a self-proclaimed Lady Sex Adventurer. It's a coming of age story about a girl who is doing everything she can to help her struggling family and herself, if only by masking the things she doesn't like.I think we can all relate to the embarrassing and foot-in-mouth moments throughout this book. We've all made bad jokes and messed up the name of a band we mentioned to seem cooler. We've all tried to seem sexy, and aloof, and misunderstood. There were moments in this book that I was full-on cringing because of the honesty in portrays. I really think if I had happened on this book earlier in life, I would loved it.
    • 1/5
      Unconvincing and cheap - but at least I've tried reading CM. One star for a few good turns of phrase.
    • 3/5
      I can't decide between 3 stars or 4. So we'll say 3.5. I am unfamiliar with Caitlin Moran, I know the she wrote the book How to be a Woman and is somewhat a feminist activist. I wasn’t sure what to expect from How to Build a Girl, I thought it was biography/social science and it took me by surprise to actually be fiction. Johanna is from a poor family and trying to find herself, she also wants to get laid. She decides to try out a persona she calls Dolly Wilde, who is a cynic music critic and has outrageous conversations about sex.

      I liked a lot about the book, the music mentioned, the attitude towards sex, and the overall coming of age story, but it felt unrealistic coming from a teenager perspective and that is because it isn’t. There are times in the story where Dolly/Johanna explain something and then mention how she sees it in hindsight, yet that isn’t part of the story. We are led to believe the perspective is being told by Johanna at the time it happens. So this just irritated me a bit. My second issue the absurd ideas Johanna has about her self and her role in sex. I get it can take people awhile to figure this out, but Caitlin went to the extreme. Everything else I loved, I laughed out loud at many parts. The plot has a good flow to it and it;s even though this is an extreme version of finding yourself it is relatable.
    • 5/5
      “They (parents) made you how they need you. They built you with all they know, and love—and so they can’t see what you’re not: all the gaps you feel leave you vulnerable. All the new possibilities only imagined by your generation, and nonexistent to theirs. They have done their best, with the technology they had to hand at the time—but now it’s up to you, small, brave future, to do your best with what you have.”This was delightful. Johanna Morrigan is living in poverty with an alcoholic father and a depressed mother and four brothers. She does not like her options and is afraid that she has said something that might get her dad's disability benefits taken away from him. So, she decides to rebuild herself - I mean, how hard can it be? She is smart and resourceful and willing to be bold. And she does, becoming Dolly Wilde and getting herself hired as a music critic, but still, she's only sixteen. She makes mistakes, but she is irrepressible and I admire her so much even though parts of her story broke my heart.“You go out into your world, and try and find the things that will be useful to you. Your weapons. Your tools. Your charms. You find a record, or a poem, or a picture of a girl that you pin to the wall and go, 'Her. I'll try and be her. I'll try and be her - but here.' You observe the way others walk, and talk, and you steal little bits of them - you collage yourself out of whatever you can get your hands on. You are like the robot Johnny 5 in Short Circuit, crying, 'More input! More input for Johnny 5!' as you rifle through books and watch films and sit in front of the television, trying to guess which of these things that you are watching - Alexis Carrington Colby walking down a marble staircase; Anne of Green Gables holding her shoddy suitcase; Cathy wailing on the moors; Courtney Love wailing in her petticoat; Dorothy Parker gunning people down; Grace Jones singing 'Slave to the Rhythm' - you will need when you get out there. What will be useful. What will be, eventually, you? And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone.”This book is laugh out loud funny. Seriously, pee your pants funny. And you will find yourself cheering for Johanna while begging her to please, be just a bit more careful. And don't let the teenage protagonist fool you - this is a book with adult themes and definitely not for the prudish. There is a large dose of masturbation and sex, and humor throughout that will have you laughing at completely inappropriate things. It is a slightly painful but utterly charming journey that has left me completely satisfied and wanting to read it all over again already. Highly recommended, and if you do audiobooks, then go that route, as I just cannot praise the narration skills of Louise Brealey highly enough.
    • 4/5
      How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran is the story of Johanna Morrigan, growing up in a dysfunctional family in Wolverhampton, England. Her father is an alcoholic failed musician and her mother, having recently given birth to twins, is suffering from post-natal depression. The rest of the family consists of an older brother, a younger brother, and the twin baby boys. Johanna manages to wangle herself a job as a music critic at the age of sixteen and so along with her story, there is the constant backdrop of early 1990’s British music scene. I actually found myself laughing out loud at parts in this book that are entirely too improper to repeat here, although it’s fair to say that masturbation comes into play a lot. Johanna’s mission in life is to reinvent herself from an overweight, kissless virgin into a too-cool-for-school hipster. She writes under the name of Dolly Wilde and poses as a hard drinking wise-cracker. Yet this book also had the ability to tug a little on the heartstrings. Her eccentric family was well developed and came across as real. This was a family that cared about each other. Although the author clearly states that this is a novel, I am led to believe that there are many similarities to her own life experiences. Whatever the case, How To Build A Girl was an engaging coming-of-age read that I thoroughly enjoyed.
    • 3/5
      This was good, and funny, and freaking fantastic to have a teenage female character be so blunt and matter of fact about masturbating, but a very small detail overshadowed the good parts for me: I don't understand how the main character could possibly afford a laptop in the early 90s. Those were supremely expensive, and it's odd how this wasn't flagged by editors or proofreaders. Her family was poor. Where did the damn laptop come from? (Plus heavy and bulky then, but it seems to be kind of a Macbook Air in this novel.)
    • 4/5
      Wow. What a roller-coaster. Emotions to burn here. Rude, crude and disgusting. Hilarious and yes laugh-out-loud like it says on the cover. Profoundly sad. Gut-wrenching sometimes. And yet, such a romp. So much fun. So much EMOTIONAL RANGE!! I need a drink.
    • 3/5
      Fun, light, quirky but in many ways unrealized. I have been feeling a need to read less serious books lately -- the current global political situation has me maxed out and needing levity. This was a perfect pick for those purposes. The viewpoint is lefty, feminist, working class, and smart, and that is viewpoint that is surely lacking in popular fiction. Many of the characters are wildly exaggerated to elicit giggles and that is unfortunate. Moran makes her father, her brother, and her idol ridiculous, and the book would have been better if she had not done so. Still worth a read for anyone who loves random sex and good music.
    • 3/5
      I love Moran as a commentator. As a novelist, though, her perception and insight are used to the wrong effect. Here, Johanna is both too much like Moran and not enough - her perspicacity is that of the grown-up Moran, not the awkward teenager. Biographical detail is recycled (such as the Annie lyrics story, which is less embarrassing than she thinks it is) and so the author's relationship with the character is at once too close and too far away. Don't get me wrong - it's a great read. Moran is witty, smart as smart, and a keen observer. It's a pity she gives Johanna all these attribute prematurely , and doesn't let her genuinely bumble and fail to recognise and comment on her own perceived failings.
    • 4/5
      Johanna Morrigan, at fourteen, is still unformed. Not that there isn’t plenty of heft to her. It’s just that living on benefit in a large family on a council estate in Wolverhampton has her thinking there may be something more to life. There is. But she is going to have to find it herself and to do so she’ll have to start by becoming someone else. Thus begins a process of self-creation that inevitably leads to sex and drugs and rock-n-roll. Also alcohol and cigarettes, but who’s counting. In her alter-ego as Dolly Wilde, the enfant terrible of the indie music magazine D&ME, Johanna starts cutting a swath through puerile pop as she wordsmiths her way to freedom and more than one epiphany.Caitlin Moran’s writing is full of zest, almost tiringly irrepressible, but always with a hint of insight to justify the excess. You can’t help but feel bound to Johanna’s quest for whatever it is she is really seeking — and even she may not be fully aware what that is until the end. But even when her choices are bad choices, they are undoubtedly hers; she owns them. Fortunately, you can have some hope that she has the inner resources, either wit or waggery, to face down her mistakes and rebuild if her first efforts at girl building go awry.Be prepared for some frank eye-opening and a fair number of laughs. Gently recommended to fourteen year olds and others in need of inspired reconstructive self-surgery.
    • 4/5
      Coming of age story of a British girl, in the 1990's, who recreates herself, including a new name. an interesting journey, sometimes a bit raunchy and quite a good read. The British and pop references were a bit confusing though.
    • 4/5
      I loved parts of Moran's novel, and didn't love other parts as much, but I did find it to be very original. I loved how empowered Johanna was throughout the novel, even as she was a bit misguided. I loved seeing her journey of self-discovery. She knew what she wanted and put everything she had into pursuing that goal, even though her attempts were not always as true to she was as she thought they were.

      I appreciated Johanna's self-discovery, because it felt honest and true. I admired the way she dove into her dreams full-force, and never apologized for who she was. Even her mistakes just served to help her realize what she really wanted out of life, and helped her to know exactly who she wanted to BE to get there.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. While the author did fit several social issues into a small amount of space, sometimes leaving the reader confused, the end result was a witty and clever novel which does what it set out to do: teach you how to build a girl. A few things were discordant, though: for example, worldly Johanna couldn't figure out that her brother was gay. Her blindness was ridiculous. "I know why my brother's been examining gay clubs! He's going to help me get my gay best friend!" and that sort of thing. It might not have been the social commentary of the century, but I can't help but give it five stars. Just so much fun to read!
    • 4/5
      Funny, clever, but I'm afraid I had hyped it up in my own mind to something different.
    • 5/5
      THIS BOOK, ISN'T - FIVE STARS.. IT'S, !! AWESOME.. LIKE, IF YOU'RE - NOT INTERESTED IN DAUGHTERS.. DON'T, BOTHER.. BUT, LIKE, IF YOU HAVE, ANY INTEREST - IN DAUGHTERS?!.. IMMENSE!.. JUST, FABULOUS!.. !!..
    • 4/5
      Ah, Caitlin - rude, raucous, and radical, just your average 14 year old from a poverty stricken Wolverhampton family, who makes her way onto the staff of a music magazine by topping all other writers in diminishing and destroying Midland lads and their bands. Although labeled "a novel", the trajectory follows Moran's own, and she is now the most popular columnist in England. Having read her earlier How To Be A Woman and Morantology, I think I'm done here. She can't outrage and surprise me much more, except when she grows up: "Cynicism scours through a culture like bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas. Cynicism means you presume everything will end in disappointment. Cynicism is ultimately fear." But don't bring this book home unless you've already shocked and horrified your own family.
    • 2/5
      Where this novel succeeded best was in its depiction of poverty and sibling (particularly brother-sister) devotion. While ambitious, it didn't really work out as a feminist narrative on any level, except to deliver the newsflash that teenaged girls are sexual creatures. The idea that girls build several "selves" out of bits and pieces of their adventures before hitting on the right self, as the annoying and intrusive older second narrator tells us--is this any more of a feminist message than that a girl has one true self and she needs to remain true to her? And can't a girl just have adventures without their having some huge psychic significance and implications for her entire future and identity?

      I was interested in Johanna the budding READER and SCHOLAR far more than the potential of J. the frustrated masturbator. Were these (reader and scholar) discarded pieces of self? Apart from one tear through Adrian Mole (more of a pun, given the circumstances, than a return to avid reading), Johanna goes from reading everything she can get her hands on to reading lousy music fanzines exclusively. Is this a good choice for a writer?

      The construction of the novel is sloppy, and the book seems to be painstakingly and repetitively illustrating one truth (Johanna is leaving behind the best of herself in making Dolly, and making Dolly to fit male standards at that) but ends up asserting something else altogether (Dolly is okay, and contains pieces of Johanna's eventual adult self, but really should be a more polite writer). Unless Johanna is a serious masochist (and we spent a whole chapter finding out otherwise) her commitment to continue "having sex with lots of people" should follow more than one depiction of fictional sex that the poor girl actually enjoyed. The question of birth control is left out of the novel entirely. Is it science fiction?

      I agree with other reviewers who say that Moran just tried to do too much in too few pages. A sexual journey, a musical journey, a journey to a positive body image, a fight with siblings out of poverty, a feminist awakening, a discovery of what real love is all about--every one of these themes was seriously shortchanged.
    • 4/5
      Johanna Morrigan is a fourteen-year-old overweight “nothing” who recreates herself over the summer as Dolly Wilde, adventurous and fun-loving music critic. She is desperate to find a way to save her family after their government assistance is reduced and devises a plan to become a music critic to make money.She is also obsessed with the idea of sex and losing her virginity, and begins to work hard at resolving this situation.She builds herself, then rebuilds herself, and rebuilds again.Johanna lives at home with her dysfunctional parents and siblings. Her father is an alcoholic dreamer who supports his family on government assistance while he drunkenly awaits his big break into music. Her mother appears to have given up on life, suffering from post-partum depression after the unexpected birth of twins. And she finds herself at an awkward stage with her brother Krissi, where he is pulling away into adulthood (and away from her oafish behavior), and Johanna finds she misses him.The story starts when Johanna is fourteen, but fairly quickly it jumps a few years to Johanna at seventeen as her recreated self Dolly Wilde. I appreciated the idea of recreating yourself in this image of who you wish to be-- especially for a young person who hates themselves.However this book felt annoyingly juvenile at times. It was a little too "YA" for my taste. I found myself being simultaneously amused and somewhat bored by both the characters and the story. When trying to put my finger on the the feeling, I thought, "It feels like laying around in a hammock on the weekend, bored with nothing better to do, and watching a bunch of pre-adolescent kids being obnoxious and entertaining themselves. If there were something better to do, I'd get up and leave."The story was very crass and childish. I'm not saying that it was "offensive", as I'm not easily offended, and I in fact love a little crudity in my characters. However this story was just crass and juvenile, and I found myself mentally shaking my head as I would if this girl were talking to me in person, wishing she would mature, because despite her embellished accomplishments, she was very immature. Perhaps that is part of the problem for me. My mother always told me that I was "born to be 40" when I was a kid. I was always mature for my age. So while I "get" aspects of this novel and can see my juvenile-self in certain moments, overall I was never this immature and couldn't identify with much of it.But I do issue a heavy warning to those who are easily offended. The book is full of vulgarity, distasteful references, coarse behavior, and sexual situations. So tread carefully.This book actually consisted of some decent writing which had the ability to move the story along at a steady pace. And it was a peculiar story, which gave it a little interest, but I found it essentially lifeless. It was just "okay" for me-- a momentary distraction that I will quickly forget.
    • 4/5
      This book tells the story of Johanna Morrigan, who grows up on benefits, in a large family in Wolverhampton and who manages to get herself a job writing reviews for a music magazine while still a teenager. Which is also the story of author Caitlin Moran. If you've followed Moran's columns for The Times or read either her collection of essays in Moranthology or her very funny book about feminism, How to Be a Woman, lots of her first novel will feel familiar, although less in an "oh, I've read that before way" and more in the way reading about a place you've lived or about a person you know feels familiar. The same topics and events arise. Johanna desperately wants out of Wolverhampton and dreams of a fabulous life in London, although it's clear to her that Johanna Morrigan, badly dressed, fat and prone to saying the wrong thing, would not be a success in London. So she reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde and finds that when she's pretending to be Dolly, all the outrageous, witty things that Johanna would never remember to say leap immediately to her tongue. Dolly knows how to be scandalous, how to be confident in a room full of purposeful strangers and how to make herself memorable. Dolly's not always particularly nice, but she isn't hiding under her bed talking to her dog. Johanna talks in a Scooby-Doo voice when nervous; Dolly plonks down a bottle of booze on the conference room table and polishes her reputation as a lady sex adventurer. Pulling the two parts of herself together and finding out what she really wants while saving her family might be a little harder.How to Build a Girl is very funny. If you've liked Moran's essays, you'll like her first novel.
    • 2/5
      Johanna is a teenage girl living with her struggling family in England. She decides to reinvent herself as Dolly Wilde and gets a job reviewing local concerts and albums. This one really didn't work for me. I was so heartbroken by the way the main character saw the world. She thought the only way for any young teenage girl to be happy is to completely change who you are and what you love. You have to sleep with everyone, pretend to hate everything and then maybe people will like you. It was a struggle for me to finish it.
    • 5/5
      This is a semi-autobiographical novel about Johanna, an awkward, bookish but wonderfully spirited teenager living on a Wolverhampton council estate, who reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde, a wild-child pop culture fiend, in order to get a job in music journalism and earn money to help keep her family out of abject poverty. It's absolutely hilarious, brutally honest and deliciously earthy, and I've underlined half the book; there are so many brilliant one-liners, beautiful little philosophies and moments of painfully real political and social commentary. Love, love, love.