How to Build a Girl: A Novel

What do you do in your teenage years when you realize what your parents taught you wasnamp;#39;t enough? You must go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroesamp;#8212;and build yourself.

Itamp;#39;s 1990. Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that thereamp;#39;s no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wildeamp;#8212;fast-talking, hard-drinking gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writeramp;#8212;like Jo in Little Women, or the Brontamp;#235;samp;#8212;but without the dying-young bit.

By sixteen, sheamp;#39;s smoking cigarettes, getting drunk, and working for a music paper. Sheamp;#39;s writing pornographic letters to rock stars, havingamp;#160;allamp;#160;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 sheamp;#39;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 Jaramp;#8212;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.