The New York Timesbestselling author hailed as "the UK''s answer to Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, andLena Dunham all rolled into one" (Marie Claire) makes her fiction debutwith a hilarious yet deeply moving coming-of-age novel.
What do you do in yourteenage years when you realize what your parents taught you wasn''t enough? Youmust go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroes-and buildyourself.
It''s 1990. Johanna Morrigan,fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides there''s nopoint in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as DollyWilde-fast-talking, hard-drinking Gothic hero and full-time Lady SexAdventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming awriter-like Jo in Little Women, or the Bröntes-but without the dyingyoung bit.
By sixteen, she''s smokingcigarettes, getting drunk, and working for a music paper. She''s writingpornographic letters to rock stars, having all the kinds of sex with all kindsof men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of six hundred words or less.
But what happens whenJohanna 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 girlafter all?
Imagine The Bell Jarwritten by Rizzo from Grease. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant,and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as onlyCaitlin Moran could tell it.
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