How to Build a Girl

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.