Book review - How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

I am a complete and utter failure.

Well maybe not a complete failure, but I haven't done a book review on here since October so in the book review department, so I'm not doing too well. However, for my 2015 reading challenge on Goodreads I am aiming to read 50 books so hopefully you'll see a lot more book reviews on here over the next year. 

I've wanted to read How to Build a Girl for ages because the author, Caitlin Moran, is an open, opinionated feminist and when I read the synopsis of this book on Amazon, I just knew that it was something I had to read. Luckily, I received it for my birthday but I've only just gotten round to reading it.

Synopsis:

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 Brontes - but without the dying young bit. Imagine The Bell Jar written by Rizzo from Grease, with a soundtrack by My Bloody Valentine and Happy Mondays. As beautiful as it is funny, How To Build a Girl is a brilliant coming-of-age novel in DMs and ripped tights, that captures perfectly the terror and joy of trying to discover exactly who it is you are going to be.

My thoughts:

I really enjoyed this book at the beginning when Johanna was a fourteen year old living in post-Thatcher Wolverhampton in a council house, what I loved about the post-Thatcher aspect of the book was that all the characters in it are clear lefties so it was nice to read about characters who hated Margaret Thatcher as much as I do (clearly hate is the pathway to love). Johanna starts off as a somewhat irritating character in that she wants to be someone who she's not, so she's a bit like a pretentious hipster, however I don't think that all characters should be likable in a book and to dislike a book on the basis that the main character isn't likeable is silly, not all people are likable, why should all book characters be? 

I enjoyed all of the musical references in the book, The Beatles and The Smiths came up quite a fair bit, I know it may seem sad but when they're mentioned in books or TV shows my heart does a little flip so y'know it was nice to have that in this book.

I feel like the beginning and the end of the book are very different, and I preferred the first half because in the second half there was so much talk of sex and I'm not a prude y'know I'm all about the frick frack but preferably not in vivid detail and when I'm reading it in school and have invasive friends looking over my shoulders, I think I'm just a bit awkward, like Miranda, when it comes to reading about sex in books.

Overall rating:

I gave this a 4/5 on Goodreads, I did feel there was a bit too much of the sexy times for my liking but  I quite liked the way the book ended, and I can imagine a really good film being adapted from this too which is hard to do with some books.

Have you read How to Build a Girl?

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