Caitlin Moran Readalong: How To Build a Girl

Hi, everybody! It's the third week of our pre-publication discussion of Caitlin Moran's upcoming novel, How to Build a Girl.  Through the generosity of HarperCollins, Moran's publisher in the US, we've all been given access to the book, and if our blogposts (or accompanying GIFs) pique your interest, then consider pre-ordering the book here.  Please beware that all of our posts will be spoilerific.

Okay, y'all. Now I've been enjoying the book as we've been going along, but this week's portion?  I LOVED it.  I started reading this week's section around 11:30 pm a couple of nights ago and I was so utterly smitten with the story she was presenting us that I had to read straight through to the end.  Around 1:30 in the morning I finished it, and my mind was racing so much that it was much later before I fell asleep.  Since I had to be at work, that reading was an act of pure devotion. (Don't worry--I won't spoil what happens in the last section this week.) EDITED TO ADD: I AM AN IDIOT. DESPITE BEING THE HOST, I FORGOT THAT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO END AT CHAPTER 15, NOT AT THE END OF SECTION TWO.  I'm very sorry, especially because I do have some spoiler things from the end of section two this week.  Please don't hate me, or if you do, please get over your hatred soon.

I dog-eared more pages in this book than any other book I can recall reading.  In fact, I took a photo of my book to share with you. And those are just the top edges.  Often there were parts on the verso/recto of the same page, so I dogeared the bottom pages for those circumstances.

I don't usually abuse my books this much

There is definitely something about Moran's book that lends itself to the humourous gifs that we've been using each week, but I almost don't want to use any because I fear they will distract from its importance. You see, this is a book that fills a gap that has been open in literature for a long time.  This is coming of age like we've not seen in a long time, if ever -- it's the equivalent for older teens of Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, the book that set the bar for the genre in 1970 when it was published, but which has become all but irrelevant for the last two decades.  But because Moran is writing for adults, there are no holds barred, which is not always the case in the world of YA, and therefore gets down to the nitty-gritty.  The fact that it's interlaced with social commentary about the class system? Well, that's pure gravy.

It's the story I wish I had been able to read when I was in my early twenties (I was a much later bloomer than Daisy/Johanna), and it's told in a language and style I wish I was brave enough to use myself. And if it had been available to me when I was a teenager, I think there's an excellent chance my life would have taken different direction.  As it is, reading this book in my forties is still an utter revelation. In other words, this book is 100% my jam.

When we left Dolly/Johanna last week, she'd been just offered the gig to interview John Kite. In Dublin.  No big deal or anything.  This week we open with Johanna on the airplane -- her first time ever on a plane, her first time ever out of the country.  Her innocence and insight are precious:

I am getting incredibly high on a single, astounding fact: that it's always sunny above the clouds. Always. That every day on earth -- every day I have ever had -- was secretly sunny, after all. However shitty and rainy it is in Wolverhampton -- on the days where the cloud feel low, like a lid, and the swarf bubbles and the gutters churn to digest -- it's always been sunny up here. I feel like I've just flown 600 miles per hours head-on into the most beautiful metaphor of my life: If you fly high enough, you get above the clouds, it's never-ending summer. 

Anyway...to make a long story short, Johanna spends this section falling in love with John Kite, honing her skills as a writer, learning how to have sex, and learning how to be mean and snarky in print. In the meantime, her family's benefits are cut by 11%, and this brings out the social commentary that lends this novel a heft that the surface humor belies:

There are no investments to cash in, to tide you over this 11 percent dip -- no bonds, savings, or shares. There are no "little luxuries" to cut back on, like going to the hairdressers, or a subscription to a magazine. We cut our own hair, and read magazines in the library. There are no grand plans we can temporarily shelve, during this cash lull -- like replacing our car, or decorating the front room. We were never going to replace our car, or decorate our front room.  

And there's no one we can borrow from -- for one of the truths about the poor is that they tend only to know other poor people, who also couldn't afford an 11 percent dip, and can't subsidize ours.  

The truth is, when you are very poor, that 11 percent bites into the very bones of our existence. Eleven percent less means choosing between electricity or food -- electricity and food that is already rationed and fretted over. Eleven percent is not very much, but when you are very poor, it may form the very bedrock of your survival. 

We follow Caitlin Johanna/Dolly through her first kiss, her first drunkenness, her first sexual experience, and the various levels of professional self-assuredness that she climbs.  She learns the difference between cynicism and just being plain mean.  She pursues men (well, one man in particular) who just don't treat her well. And above all, she learns to see *herself* in a relationship, and not just through the eyes of the men she sleeps with. She tries for so long to be edgy and hard that it takes a disaster to make her realize that 

"It is a million times easier to be cynical and wield a sword than it is to be open-hearted and stand there, holding a balloon and a birthday cake, with the infinite potential to look foolish. Because I still don't know what I really think or deel, and I'm throwing grenades and filling the air with smoke while I desperately, desperately try to get off the ground: to get elevation. Because I haven't learned the simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind."

Amen.  I don't believe I'll use any more gifs, because that's the note I'd like to end on.  This book is so damned funny that it's easy to forget the home truths that it drives home.  I get the feeling, and not only from the narrative"I", but from what I've learned about Moran from other bloggers, that this novel is not just personal, but autobiographical. Reading it makes me want to stand up and cheer. It also makes me thankful that, overwhelmingly, the boys and men in my romantic life have all been pretty decent and, erm, generous to me in ways that the boys and men in Johanna's life have not been to her. I can't wait to discuss the ending of this next week with you all.

P.S.   Swashfuckler. That is an excellent word. I will never not laugh when I see it or think it.

Just like that. But with a different kind of sword.