Book review
So I read How To Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran, her new novel. It features a teenaged girl called Johanna Morrigan growing up in 90s Wolverhampton who changes her name to Dolly Wilde and starts writing for a London-based music weekly. I quite liked it, it's funny + it's an easy read + talks about how you create your identity as you become an adult. If you've read How To Be A Woman (or indeed a fair bit of CM's columns) then you'll be familiar with the story + her style - even tho' she says it isn't autobiographical, a lot of it is clearly based on her life + experiences.
I think one thing I wasn't that keen on was the secondary characters in the book fell a bit flat for me + for someone who makes such a big deal about being pro-women there weren't really any fleshed out female characters beyond Johanna/Dolly - there's her mum, a cousin + some girl she gets off with to try +make her sort-of-boyfriend jealous but none of them really came alive for me. (I thought the best other character in the book was John Kite, the musician she has a crush on). I was just really hoping for some friends or even other female journalists/musicians that she met while doing her job.
Also CM said she didn't want to write a stereotypical YA novel like Twilight that centred round romance but a fair part of the book is given over to Johanna/Dolly's sexual exploits tho' to be fair it's not a straightforward romance. And CM went on about nobody else wrote about sex like she did which quite frankly is bullshit because there are loads of other books out there that teenagers/other readers read that have this much sex in + more.
I think I read somewhere CM had said something about a trilogy so maybe this is just the 1st part + she's going to write more.
I think one thing I wasn't that keen on was the secondary characters in the book fell a bit flat for me + for someone who makes such a big deal about being pro-women there weren't really any fleshed out female characters beyond Johanna/Dolly - there's her mum, a cousin + some girl she gets off with to try +make her sort-of-boyfriend jealous but none of them really came alive for me. (I thought the best other character in the book was John Kite, the musician she has a crush on). I was just really hoping for some friends or even other female journalists/musicians that she met while doing her job.
Also CM said she didn't want to write a stereotypical YA novel like Twilight that centred round romance but a fair part of the book is given over to Johanna/Dolly's sexual exploits tho' to be fair it's not a straightforward romance. And CM went on about nobody else wrote about sex like she did which quite frankly is bullshit because there are loads of other books out there that teenagers/other readers read that have this much sex in + more.
I think I read somewhere CM had said something about a trilogy so maybe this is just the 1st part + she's going to write more.