Caitlin Moran
I had almost neglected to write this review, seeing as it has been so over-reviewed already, but when I saw a friend reading it and laughing all the way through, I felt the need to offer my thoughts.
All those who know Caitlin Moran know her story by now - a clever girl raised on a council estate who lands a teenage writing prize and goes on to blag a column in The Times. Moran insists that How to Build a Girl is fiction, but it is hard to distance this novel from her own reality.
But it is not the plot of this novel that I want to celebrate, rather the little snippets of hilarity that are simultaneously completely familiar and obsurely unique. The teenage self-consiousness that convinces Johanna Morrigan she is singularly responsible for her family's poverty. The misreading of social convention that makes dressing solely in black seem like the best idea, and her mother's concern that she is acting like a dark crow that has decended upon the household. The naivety that allows her to have so much sex and so few orgasims.
Whether or not you like that fact that Moran seems to only write about one thing, you cannot deny the fact that she is honest, realistic and frankly hilarious.
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