Guardian Review

Often when a book comes along to which the phrase "coming-of-age" attaches, particularly if it's the product of my own gender and era, I set my face and aspect politely, readying, not to enjoy it, but to look as though I do, because I would hate to be one of those people from whom criticism might appear to be sour grapes or cynicism. This book has broken me for that; I was rocking with laughter in the library, crying with love on the tube. It has a Seinfeld-effect, where sheer buildup of amusement invests even the simplest word - "penis", "dry-cleaner" - with explosive power. It turns out I don't hate romans a clef after all. I just hadn't met the right roman a clef. This is the story of a young girl, Johanna Morrigan, in Wolverhampton, growing up extremely poor with a feckless, alcoholic father and a mother with postnatal depression. She becomes a music journalist by the age of 17. It is impossible to ignore how much territory it shares with Moran's own life. There's a cocky disclaimer at the start - "this is a novel and it is all fictitious", as though anyone sifting it for clues would be guilty of failing to understand what "novel" means - but I admired the brio of that. She may as well have said, "screw you; think what you like". Moran is an extremely accomplished comic writer, probably the most up-to-date exemplar of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours theory of genius. The vigour of her intent is there in every description. The smallest walk-on pisshead will get a line like "his tie looked like it had been put on by an enemy, and was strangling him". The timeline is pin accurate but casually thrown down, as if to say, "well, of course my mother would have compared me to Boutros Boutros-Ghali and not Perez de Cuellar, because it was real 1992, and not made-up 1992". A section in which Morrigan wins a poetry competition and appears on local TV is so deftly told that the bullying that comes after it just made me laugh more, guiltily, wishing I could stop. But the memorable bits will be all the sex, specifically the masturbation. Johanna Morrigan masturbates constantly, with anything she can find, though in this materially impoverished household, options are few. She realises at one point that a roll-on deodorant is "shaped - astonishingly, usefully, blatantly - like a cheerful, chunky cock . . . Proctor and Gamble were selling adolescent girls Starter Dildos for 79p." She wanks so much and so audibly that her brother has to move to sleep in the dining room. Bernard Avishai's study of Portnoy's Complaint refers to "masturbation as a form of rebellion, lewdness as a cultural opportunity, repression as a psychic fact". Only female sexuality could constitute such a rebellion, this century. We are up to our eyeballs in male onanists; but search your mind for a description of female sexuality that isn't mediated through writers who only have it on trust that female orgasms even happen. It's partly a shout of relief, all this laughter, to finally read something about female sexuality whose language reflects the truth of it, rather than the language we have become so accustomed to, which exists to obscure its own ignorance. Oppression, rather than repression, is Moran's psychic fact - the poverty is suffocating; the effervescence of the protagonist, so thrilling on some pages, at other times has the desperate pathos of a drowning person gulping for air. Towards the end, the necessity for protagonists to go on a "journey", featuring the learning of some vital lesson manifests in Morrigan recognising some harsh truths about herself. Fiction can't seem to overcome this formula. Why do characters have to grow? Why can't they just walk into your life, bedazzle you, and walk out again, like Breaking Bad Yet when I see this book described as "laugh-out-loud funny" I feel affronted; it could make you laugh out loud with one hand tied behind its back, while wanking itself off to fantasies of Satan. Laughing out loud is just the start. To order How to Build a Girl for pounds 11.49 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk. - Zoe Williams Caption: Captions: Funny? That's just the start . . . Caitlin Moran The memorable bits will be all the sex, specifically the masturbation. [Johanna Morrigan] masturbates constantly, with anything she can find, though in this materially impoverished household, options are few. She realises at one point that a roll-on deodorant is "shaped - astonishingly, usefully, blatantly - like a cheerful, chunky cock . . . Proctor and Gamble were selling adolescent girls Starter Dildos for 79p." She wanks so much and so audibly that her brother has to move to sleep in the dining room. Bernard Avishai's study of Portnoy's Complaint refers to "masturbation as a form of rebellion, lewdness as a cultural opportunity, repression as a psychic fact". Only female sexuality could constitute such a rebellion, this century. We are up to our eyeballs in male onanists; but search your mind for a description of female sexuality that isn't mediated through writers who only have it on trust that female orgasms even happen. It's partly a shout of relief, all this laughter, to finally read something about female sexuality whose language reflects the truth of it, rather than the language we have become so accustomed to, which exists to obscure its own ignorance. - Zoe Williams.