Reviews with content warning for Self harm - How to Build a Girl

There are decent writers who already write for a living and then get to publish books. There are good writers who never get anything published. This is a superficially easy to read but hard to process book. The references to frequent wanking are necessarily desensitizing but uncomfortable - we should all be more open about it. The steady spiral downward of a young woman is hard to take and not really that funny, although many of us have been there and it is relatable. The rude awakening she goes through at the end is the part I liked, where I could finally see her as someone with feelings and not just impulses. Of course it's well written because the author writes for a living, and it is a book that should be out there. I just always wonder how many other good books are not out there, piled up in the corners of publishing houses who knee-jerk publish anything written by someone who is already known rather than put someone knew out in the community.

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b_harrington's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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rapgamenancyreagan's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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em_brebs's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

How to Build a Girl is shockingly profound, lovely, crass, and painfully accurate. Though Johanna lives a drastically different teenagehood than I did, and all of her feelings and perspectives are specific to her experience, they feel analogous to my own. Reading about Johanna is painful because she is so, so innocent and so, so out of her depth, but she wants it all so, so much. She's a teenage girl and that's incredible but also, my God, the absolute worst.

The first 90% of the novel is brilliant and packed with smart writing: funny jokes, insightful lines, and incredibly specific, well-drawn characters. I can't even say everything I love about it. Johanna's voice is the best. But also her brother and her mom and her dad and her other brother and her incredible, life-defining crush.

The last 10% I didn't like quite as much: it felt like Moran was struggling to pull together an ending with the gravity and clarity that a novel of this sort demands. How to Build a Girl is essentially a classic coming of age novel, and so it feels as though Johanna should really come of age at the end. Instead, there's a bit of a stall and some mildly cliché platitudes. Additionally, in the sort of tormenting last couple chapters, Johanna self-harms

she cuts her arms and legs

for the first time in the story. The self-harm felt gratuitous and as though it lacked meaning to the story. How to Build a Girl is FULL of behavior that is self-destructive and harmful, but at least the rest of it felt considered and thoughtful. I'm sure Moran thought about including that scene, just because the rest of the novel is so intentional, but it doesn't feel that way.

There were also some sections in which the Johanna's clear, decisively teenage voice faded away into a much more adult and measured narrator, which felt especially disconcerting given how consistent Johanna's voice was elsewhere. We know who she is, so when she disappears it's weird. Also, I feel like Moran's project is clear. As a reader, I at no point thought Johanna was RIGHT about literally anything at all, so I don't feel like Moran had to be quite so explicit about the fact that, obviously, Johanna is super wrong about everything.

I want to again underline that I LOVED the first 90% and only struggled with the last maybe 5-10%. If you have to choose between reading and not reading, ABSOLUTELY read!!! It's just that Moran didn't entirely stick the landing. But I promise it's MORE than worth it to live through Johanna's honesty for a bit: 89%

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