How to Build a Girl: A Novel

Caitlin Moran

Sep 2014 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

Why would u think that having a 14year old child having sex and doing porn would be ok?is this what u think about all day. This book is wrong to be having young girl having sex with older men. What would make u feel that's ok? This book is wrong i mean u couldnt explain your reason why u made this to anyone.....this book is trashy how could this help anyone? I would not wanna read about child having sex and drugs and porn. Who would gross and nasty.

Can't believe how many prudes use android. Or are in population in general. This seems to be a realistic, pragmatic story about finding yourself, as a woman, in a predominantly male-dominated world.

I really hope you get arrested for this. This is sickening, disgusting, and counts as pedophilia. This is NOT cool at all. Even if it was meant to be something else, it still isn't cool. Caitlin, you are one sickening person.

About the author

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.