How to Build a Girl

This coming-of-age story depicts Johanna Morrigan's transformation as she rebuilds herself and creates the life she wants to have. Louise Brealey is perfect as the voice of Johanna (a.k.a. Dolly Wilde). The story begins with the 14-year-old British teen making a fool of herself on a local television show and deciding to create a new persona--Dolly--and a career for herself as a music critic. Brealey's accent and light tone fit with Johanna's exploits and offbeat style. For her portrayals of secondary characters, however, Brealey varies her volume rather than giving them voices of their own. While much of the story is told through Johanna's thoughts and words, the dialogue of the other characters distracts from the story and takes away from the otherwise great narration. E.N. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

July 7, 2014
“The 1990s are a bad time to be poor and not-famous,” thinks 14-year-old Johanna Morrigan, who lives with her parents and four siblings on a council estate in Wolverhampton. Arguably, the new millennium brought little relief on this front, but for Moran (How to Be a Woman), the gritty British landscape of adolescence, set to a loud ’90s soundtrack of the Stone Roses and the Mondays, is the stage for Johanna’s fabulous reinvention of herself. Adopting the pseudonym Dolly Wilde, Johanna educates herself in eyeliner and contemporary music and begins submitting record reviews to a London weekly. In the process, she grows up, has adventures far beyond the estate walls, and learns to love herself. Moran’s sharp sense of humor comes through in Johanna’s observations. Gratifying, too, are the constant stream of ’90s alt-rock references (Soup Dragons, anyone?) and the portrait of a pre-Internet world, where kids actually had actually leave their houses to find new identities. Unfortunately, Johanna’s voice feels forced, and her exploits seem to surpass what might have been believable chutzpah.

April 1, 2014
British cultural critic Moran broke out here with 2012's "New York Times" best-selling "How To Be a Woman", an eye-opening look at women today through Moran's own life. Her fiction debut echoes aspects of her life--e.g., joining the music weekly "Melody Maker" at 16--before she became a prize-winning columnist at the London "Times". Here, after an embarrassing incident on local TV, 14-year-old Johanna Morrigan decides to remake herself as out-there Dolly Wilde. Soon, she's drinking regularly, having lots of sex, and writing acidulous reviews of rock bands. But can you really build the perfect girl? With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2014

Johanna Morrigan, 15, lives with her large family in the early 1990s in a council flat in Wolverhampton, a downtrodden city in the West Midlands of England. The family barely survives on disability payments from the government; her charming father is a drunk and a con artist, a wannabe rock star who despises Margaret Thatcher and pretty much all authority despite the handouts that keep them afloat. Johanna is friendless and extremely bookish, oversexed and desperate to lose her virginity, yet thwarted by her outsider status and complete lack of experience. A voracious reader despite her disregard for school, Johanna gets nearly all of her knowledge from the shelves of the public library. In an attempt to earn some cash for her family and break out of the confines of her narrow existence, Johanna reinvents herself as a rock journalist, bluffing her way into a job at a London magazine, where she creates an entirely new persona, complete with a new name. VERDICT It is rare to find such a brash, hilarious teenage heroine, unapologetic and open about her own sexuality. Moran's (How To Be a Woman) coming-of-age debut novel is both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, a treat for young adults as well as those who remember the era and its music. [See Prepub Alert, 3/3/14.]--Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2014

British cultural critic Moran broke out here with 2012's New York Times best-selling How To Be a Woman, an eye-opening look at women today through Moran's own life. Her fiction debut echoes aspects of her life--e.g., joining the music weekly Melody Maker at 16--before she became a prize-winning columnist at the London Times. Here, after an embarrassing incident on local TV, 14-year-old Johanna Morrigan decides to remake herself as out-there Dolly Wilde. Soon, she's drinking regularly, having lots of sex, and writing acidulous reviews of rock bands. But can you really build the perfect girl? With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 15, 2014
From British humorist Moran (How To Be A Woman, 2012, etc.), an overweight, socially inept teen drops out of school to become a rock critic and sexual adventuress. Fourteen-year-old Johanna Morrigan shares a bedroom with both her older and younger brothers, though the frequency of her trysts with her hairbrush might recommend otherwise. The birth of unexpected twin siblings, so far known only as David and Mavid, have made the family's Thatcher-era financial situation more desperate than ever. Her dad's attempts to revive his music career by networking at the local pub have led Johanna to conclude "the future only comes to our house when it is drunk." After a humiliating appearance on a local talk show, the unsinkable Johanna goes for re-invention from the ground up. She renames herself Dolly Wilde after Oscar's niece ("this amazing alcoholic lesbian who was dead scandalous"), assembles a wall collage of inspiring women and sexy men (including "Lenin when he was very young-I don't know exactly what he went on to do but I do know that he looks hot here"), and breaks away from her parents' playlist, substituting Bikini Kill and Courtney Love for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. By 1992, 17-year-old "Dolly" has wangled herself a job writing reviews at Disc and Music Echo magazine, which leads to her encountering and falling in love with a perfectly imagined rock star named John Kite, "the first person I'd ever met who made me feel normal." Their ecstatic, chaste night together is the high point of the book. After that, she weathers the perils of being both the meanest and easiest music critic in town. Hilarious autobiographical fiction debut for Britain's Lena Dunham-if you can forgive a dot too much nasty sex and poignant lessons learned.

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