How To Build a Girl: Part 1

How To Build a Girl
Caitlin Moran

Readalong hosted by the awesome Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads!)

'I want to live for something, instead - as men do'

What to say? Part one of How To Build a Girl feels very introductory. Not in a boring-get-on-with-the-story kind of way, but in a hello-this-is-me-and-this-is-how-this-story-will-be kind of way. You know? Please be warned, I'm about to spill some spoilers (alliteration high five!).

We're introduced to Johanna, our protagonist, and her slightly dysfunctional family who are waiting for that something that will rocket them to riches (or just any money, really):

'The future always has different names, and different clothes, but the same thing happens, time after time: the future only comes to our house when it is drunk.'

The future we're introduced to is in the form of Rock Perry, a record label talent scout who turns out to only be a cutlery salesman. The first of many let downs.

As with everything Moran has written, How To Build a Girl is extremely to the point. She does not shy away from subjects that have unfortunately become somewhat taboo in our culture. Namely, masturbation. Yes, there's lots of that going on from the very first page. But it's good. It's about time that teenage female sexuality is included in novels (and not in a dirty, self-abuse, or perverted way) and Moran is the perfect person to hopefully get that trend in motion. Girls want sex too dammit.

Moran also has some words of wisdom to share about growing up (apparently it's about 'keeping secrets and pretending everything is fine'), and poverty (writing is one of 'the few things poverty, and lack of connections, cannot stop you doing').

Then there's this:

'Because my biggest secret of all - the one I would rather die than tell, the one I wouldn't put in my diary - is that I really, truly, in my heart, want to be beautiful. I want to be beautiful so much - because it will keep me safe, and keep me lucky, and it's too exhausting not to be.'

SOB. I'm sure there are very few girls/women on earth who cannot relate to this. As a short, frizzy haired, red cheeked and genetically-large-arsed-thunder-thighed-girl, I can seriously relate. When I was in my teens with raging hormones and some very slender and beautiful friends, I was constantly aware of my looks. I was also constantly unhappy with my looks (still working on it). In that school situation it always felt that the pretty, skinny, talented girls had it all, but now, retrospectively at least, I am so convinced that true beauty comes from within and all that other stuff is just that - stuff. This is what I love about Moran. She doesn't write unrealistic women, she writes us all. She writes about the small things that seem huge to a fourteen year old, the sexy things that are so often ignored, the body/beauty/life things that define how so many women grow up. Caitlin, don't ever stop, for all the girls out there. 

There's just one other quote I want to share, purely for the fact that's it's so damn real (for me, at least). She hits the nail on the head when she describes anxiety:

'Boiling in this quicksilver, electrocized soup forever, nerves jangling like the tiny bell over an empty shop door just after a nuclear explosion has left the shop full of the dead, and me the only one standing.'

Just, yes. 

And the final line of part one? Well, hello there, angsty cliffhanger.

'There are no two ways about it: I am going to have to die.'

Onwards and upwards!

You can pre-order the book from The Odyssey Bookshop here (US), or buy it from Foyles here (UK).

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