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How to Build a Girl  By  cover art

How to Build a Girl

By: Caitlin Moran
Narrated by: Louise Brealey
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Publisher's summary

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, 14, 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 16, 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?

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.

©2014 Caitlin Moran (P)2014 HarperCollins Canada

Critic reviews

"A hilarious yet deeply moving coming of age novel from New York Times bestselling author Caitlin Moran, "the UK’s answer to Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, and Lena Dunham all rolled into one." ( Marie Claire)

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couldnt put it down

Fantastic writing and captures the essence of an era and culture brilliantly. Growing up in the 90s and having a large part of my heart in th UK, I lapped up this story.

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