Caitlin Moran: How to Build a Girl

My review of Caitlin Moran’s book How to Build a Girl (out in the States this week) is up on BoingBoing:

Caitlin Moran’s How to Build a Girl is the story of Johanna Morrigan, poor, fat teenager from the economic backwater of 1990s Wolverhampton, and her transformation into legendary music critic and Lady Sex Adventurer, Dolly Wilde.

Thanks to a lot of hard graft at Wolverhampton’s public library, where she can read the specialist press and order any album she likes for 20p, Morrigan/Wilde finds herself anointed into the pre-Internet indie music elite as star reviewer for the Disc & Music Echo. Once there, she learns that the best way to stay on top is to write like a critic, not a fan (like “some weird angry old man, puncturing the ball of every band who kicked it over my fence”), and to stand at the back of concerts, scowling with the other writers, instead of dancing at the front.

Read the rest here.