What do you do in your teenage years when you realise what your parents taught you wasn’t enough? You must go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroes - and build yourself.

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.

By 16, she’s smoking cigarettes, getting drunk, and working for a music paper. She’s writing pornographic letters to rock-stars, having all the kinds of sex with all the kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less.

But what happens when Johanna realises 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 girl after all?

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.

Please note: This audiobook contains explicit language.

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Product details

Listening Length	9 hours and 31 minutes
Author	Caitlin Moran
Narrator	Louise Brealey
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	07 August 2014
Publisher	Random House Audiobooks
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B00NPBCXYC
Best Sellers Rank	29,997 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 368 in Humourous Fiction 1,647 in Humorous Fiction

Customer reviews

5 star		59%
4 star		21%
3 star		10%
2 star		5%
1 star		5%

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Top review from Australia

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Brilliant

Reviewed in Australia on 15 September 2015

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Brilliant. Funny and intelligent and naive and infuriating and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

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Top reviews from other countries

Ruju

Entertaining vulgarity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 June 2019

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A review from 2015 started: "Entertaining in a vulgar, rude and very British way", and that is a pretty good description of How to Build a Girl. It might even have been the line that persuaded me to read it. I wouldn't normally read a book widely tagged "Feminism", "Young Adult" and "Humour", but although I can see why some readers might have used those tags, they don't define the novel.

How to Build a Girl has an autobiographical feel to it, which works perfectly for the story. Caitlin Moran holds nothing back as the reader joins Johanna coming of age in the 1990s. Her family are a great bunch of characters, helping her out and tripping her up as she tries to find her place in the world. Johanna is strong-willed and insecure at the same time, solving and causing her own problems in equal measure.

Caitlin Moran's style makes the story flow with the wit and sarcasm of a young woman trying to escape the poverty and despair of family life on benefits in the 1990s. Sometimes I felt sympathy for Johanna, sometimes I laughed with her, and other times I cringed. All believable teenage stuff! As her life expands into the wider world, everything gets more outrageous and the sympathy, laughing and cringing multiply.

I do agree somewhat with some other reviewers that the story sagged a bit towards the end, but overall this was a very entertaining read. With all the vulgarity, How to Build a Girl isn't for everyone, but I loved Moran's no-holds-barred style and attitude. A great read, well worth its 4 stars.

9 people found this helpful

I Read Books

Immature and Self Indulgent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 January 2019

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Supposedly a coming-of-age story, but there is no story to it. Masturbate, drink, have sex, repeat. If you flick half way through and read a page you will have read the book. The only pages that differ from the rest are the last 30, which might as well be blank. Honestly, if you get as far as page 330 then just stop there, the rest is waffle.

This is the first Caitlin Moran book I've read and it's the last.

10 people found this helpful

Dave Holwill

Might be the same story, but always different

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 August 2018

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Caitlin Moran has done that which should not be possible, told the same story three times in three entirely different ways. Her fat teenage girl from Wolverhampton that wanks all the time has now turned up in this, How to be a Woman and the Raised by Wolves TV show and every time she shows us a different spin, a new edge on her. A different fat wanking girl each time if you will.
90s indie and drudgy London pubs get shown with fresh eyes, different to how I remember them at the time.
Loved this, and need to go and get the next one now.

7 people found this helpful

beccabec

Its just not that funny

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 July 2020

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I came across this book when I was looking for a funny book as a present. I thought it sounded good and I love Raised by Wolves so got it for me and planned to pass it on if it wasn't filthy (it wasn't) but I just don't think its funny, I've passed it on but not to my intended recipient - still on the hunt for a funny book for her. I laughed once, properly laughed, but didn't think any other bits were that funny. I get where Johanna comes from, I agree with her dad's politics but I think I was born too late to find her exploits funny (if that's what is meant to be funny). I like the sentiment of the book, I like who she finally resolves to be and I can absolutley relate to Dolly. I found it really sad that Johanna came to her final conclusion about who she needed to be while she was still a teenager and for me to believe that this could happen (I know its fiction, but assuming it isn't fantasy) then the whole book has to be viewed as much darker than hilarious. To make it believable then its not a light hearted coming of age book, its a book about an abused and exploited child trying desperately to help her parents and her younger siblings have the future they deserved. Had this book been billed as such, I would have enjoyed it much more because it is a good story. If you liked My Summer of Love, Helen Cross and think of this in the same style, ignoring Nigella Lawson's enrapturement (you won't miss your tea because of this book) then you'll enjoy this. If you are looking for a Shopoholic style laugh, you'll be disappointed.

FET

Soul food - the most wonderful book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 January 2021

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This book... what a joy! I wish I could give it more than 5 stars. Probably one of the best books I have read in my life, it resonated with me on every single level. It’s like the author looked into my teenage brain and wrote it all down in the most beautiful way. There are so many parallels between my life and Johanna’s life, and I suspect anyone who grew up on benefits in the 90s will feel exactly the same. This book will unlock so many memories you’d forgotten, and you’ll reflect on the choices you made on your journey to adulthood and how it’s shaped you today. It’s so thought provoking but not in a negative way - in a funny, beautiful way! I never wanted this book to end and am so delighted there’s a sequel!
Also, it was so refreshing that while a lot of the story was about Johanna’s reinvention of herself into someone ‘popular’, she never once tried to change her body shape, she refers to herself as a big girl but I loved the fact that her reinvention covered her hair, make up, clothes etc but she was entirely confident in her size. I loved that.
This book was a gift to my brain, I simply loved it.

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