'How to Build a Girl' - Caitlin Moran

How to Build a Girl is not what I expected at all. It appeared, from the blurb, to be very much a coming-of-age novel, like The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky or The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. However, Caitlin Moran has written a book with a character who is a far cry from Charlie and Holden Caulfield, and who has many resemblances to Moran herself, though she is clear to state before the story begins that "...Johanna is not me." Moran grew up in Wolverhampton on a council estate with her seven siblings, with an aspiring rock star for a father who suffered from osteoarthritis. She has been winning awards and making waves with her writing since she was thirteen years old, becoming a journalist for a music magazine at sixteen and now being a popular columnist at The Times. As well as winning awards, she is also accountable for unprecedented sales of a feminist tea towel, being a proud feminist and civil rights activist, something which is apparent to anyone who follows her on Twitter. All proceeds from her merchandise sales go to Refuge, a domestic abuse charity that provides a safe house for women and children experiencing domestic abuse.

How to Build a Girl is supposed to be the first of a trilogy of semi-autobiographical books from Moran. The beginning is bold, brash, and entirely fresh. It introduces Johanna Morrigan, a fourteen-year-old girl desperate to grow up and be somebody, but who feels she cannot achieve this by being herself; she has to rebuild herself. Like Moran at that age, Johanna lives on a council estate in Wolverhampton, with her parents and four siblings. Her mother is suffering from post-natal depression and her father is predominantly sofa-bound after an accident at work. She decides that she wants to write to make money for her family, and begins writing reviews and sending them to a music magazine when she is sixteen, taking on a goth persona called Dolly Wilde and mixing with rock stars. Her father plans to use Dolly's job at D&ME magazine to kick start his failed music career, trying to achieve his own dreams through his daughters whilst living in an alcoholic stupor. Caitlin Moran stresses that her parents are nothing like Johanna's parents in the story, even dedicating the book to them as proof. 

There's no avoiding it; the book talks A LOT about sex. This is a big chunk of the book and, unfortunately, it gets a little boring. It's not Fifty Shades of Grey (thankfully!), but it does seem to be the only thing that Johanna thinks about, with it being one of her goals to sleep with as many people as possible.This is one of the bricks in the construction of her new self, but it's DIY SOS as her sexual prowess ends in disaster after disaster. I thought that I was hating this, as I cringed and blushed, but once I had finished the book I realised that I had found every opportunity to read it. With similarities to Moran's own life, the book is very raw and Johanna very honest.

Whether you enjoy the book or not, it is a representation of a certain way of life. Regardless of your class (a topic that seems prevalent throughout), most girls can relate to at least a small part of Johanna Morrigan. Everyone has a Dolly Wilde, a persona used when you need confidence that you don't have. Johanna uses the same line as my old journalism tutor; "Fake it 'til you make it." It's a line that, for me, led from fake confidence to real confidence, and it does the same for Johanna. Moran writes successfully as a fourteen year old girl desperate to grow up, slipping perfectly into the character and maintaining it throughout the entire book, detailing Johanna's growing up in a way that not many experienced authors could. It's an incredibly strong and exuberant story, with something to prove perhaps; it does not avoid the stereotypes of a council estate but instead uses them to show how they can still lead to talent and success, the best example of this being the author herself!