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  • How to Build a Girl

  • Written by: Caitlin Moran
  • Narrated by: Louise Brealey
  • Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (14 ratings)

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How to Build a Girl

Written by: Caitlin Moran
Narrated by: Louise Brealey
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Publisher's Summary

What do you do in your teenage years when you realize 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 Bröntes - 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 realizes 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. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant, and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as only Caitlin Moran could tell it.

©2014 Caitlin Moran (P)2014 HarperCollins Canada

What the critics say

"A hilarious yet deeply moving coming of age novel from New York Times bestselling author Caitlin Moran, "the UK’s answer to Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, and Lena Dunham all rolled into one." ( Marie Claire)

What listeners say about How to Build a Girl

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Totally hilarious!

Narrator was brilliant and I felt like I was truly in the story. Loved every minute and felt like I learned a few things about my teenage self.

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1 person found this helpful

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Entertain and Educational

Helped a while prevleged 61 yo straight man trying to understand the female condition.

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    1 out of 5 stars

not my kind of book.

Stopping listen after the opening paragraph………
.. .. … .. not my kind of book.

Stopping listen after the opening paragraph………
.. .. … .. not my kind of book.

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