The Character Loses Battles, but the Writer’s Won the War 

In Moranthology, Caitlin Moran’s 2012 compendium of her decades of brash, personal columns for the British press, Moran jokes that as a teenage girl living in public housing in Wolverhampton, England, her career options were limited to “prostitution,” “working the checkout at the Gateway supermarket,” or “becoming a writer.” Moran chose door No. 3, of course, and in this month’s novel How to Build a Girl, she loans the line to protagonist Johanna Morrigan, a 14-year-old girl living in public housing in Wolverhampton, England. Johanna—a voracious reader and even more insatiable masturbator—is too poor for records and too young to fuck, so she learns what rock music sounds like and what semen tastes like via borrowed library magazines, then rebrands herself as the London party girl Dolly Wilde, cinches a job as a teen music journalist, and sets out to hear and taste for herself. “If I don’t keep this job,” Johanna tells her mother, “then my only future career options are working in Argos or being a prostitute.” Continue reading at 'Slate'

[ Slate | 2014-09-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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