28 July 2014

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.




18 comments:

  1. OH GOD DID I NOT READ ENOUGH THIS WEEK?

    I thought this week was chapters 11 through 15. Did I force myself to stop FOR NO GOOD REASON?

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    1. Well, that's just what I get for not double checking how much I was reading the other night 'cause I remembered that we were supposed to read through the end of section two. I'm SO sorry, Kayleigh, and I'll go back and add something about reading
      spoilers at the beginning of my post.

      Sincerely,
      Your IDIOTIC host

      Delete
    2. Phewww! But it's alright, when I realised there was stuff in your post I hadn't read I started to skim to avoid spoilers. I wrote the pages in my diary rights the start so I thought I might have missed a memo somewhere along the way.

      Delete
  2. I mostly loved this section too, for all the reasons you talk about. But I'm increasingly annoyed with the present/past tense switching. It feels sloppy to me. But I loooooooooove Johanna/Dolly.

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    1. usually seeing those kinds of needless tense switches vexes me to no end. This week, though, I was reading too feverishly to notice. i can't believe it!

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    2. I agree, Amy - Moran's constant tense changes really stick out to me. But, like Emily, I barely noticed it this section.

      (I just finished reading How to Be a Woman and had the same issue there, as well, so I think it's part of her style...)

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  3. THAT'S SO RAVEN GIF

    Dude, I do not know how I would've responded to this book in my teens/very early twenties. I think I might've put it down right after the first reference to masturbation on page 1. But if I'd kept going, I totally might've taken a different direction in my life mentally. WHO KNOWS; let's make young people read this.

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    1. The first sentence on page one would have mortified me as a teenager, but probably also intrigued me, so I would have read this book with a flashlight in my dark room in the hopes that nobody would know I was reading it.

      However, my teenage self *clearly* would have benefited from reading it.

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  4. I loved this week! It was painfully raw. Can't wait to see what else happens

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  5. Jelly that I'm no longer an official blogger getting to do these read-a-longs! I will definitely make a pre-order. Also, thank you for the book you sent me. Definitely better late... (I'm too old for the alternative).

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    Replies
    1. It just takes a while for my actions to catch up with my intentions. Glad it arrived--hope you like it better than I did. So nice to hear from you and I hope your summer is going well!

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  6. Argh, I read too far in the spoilery bit for my own good! Curiosity, I am a cat.

    I keep thinking of this book as a grown-up (or maybe just more explicit) version of the Georgia Nicholson books, which I LOVED as a high schooler. I think me and my friends read them so many times we could quote whole pages. There was a character called Robbie the Sex God and it was so, so scandalous to 14-year-old me (even though there is very little actual action in the books -- just lots of snogging talk).

    Anyway, I think all teen girls would adore those books, so How to Build a Girl is just taking it to the next level, and injecting some sneak-attack feminism in there for good measure.

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    1. Yeah, I'm *so* sorry for my ineptitude and the spoilers. The Georgia Nicholson books came out in my twenties and I read the first one when I was a bookseller. I think the most risque thing about it was its title. I think the YA genre is gradually coming to reflect the actual experiences of teens, what with the proliferation of books that address cutting, eating disorders, and suicide.

      But where are the frank explorations of sex and sexuality? Why, as a reading culture, are we still so collectively hung up on virginity? Why do parents not care if their daughters are reading about killing other children in ritual games, but they don't want them reading about sex? And why should feminism have to come about only in a sneak attack? All of these questions make me sad.

      Which is why I'm so happy that this book exists. I hope it can do for girls what I wish it could have done for me at that age.

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  7. I am excited to get to the part where "swachfuckler" is a word. (I don't think I missed it... did I?)

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    1. Nope, you haven't missed it. It comes up in next week's reading, which I mistakenly thought was part of this week's. It is perhaps my new favorite word.

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  8. "You see, this is a book that fills a gap that has been open in literature for a long time." Yeeeeees. Caitlin is a damn REVOLUTIONARY.

    But dammit, Emily. NOW I know Johanna is going to make sex with someone before the end of Part 2. *shakes fist at you but lovingly*

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  9. 'You see, this is a book that fills a gap that has been open in literature for a long time.' <-- yes, yes, and yes. Couldn't agree more. That it what I'm loving most about this book, the fact that it is finally a coming of age novel for the real girl.

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  10. That picture of your dogeared book makes me so happy. Well loved, this book.

    "the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind." Oops, I cried.

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Please, sir, may I have some more? (Comments, that is!)