Half feminist comedy, half romance novel—a genre whose time has come.
A 19-year-old British rock critic contends with big egos, endless partying, a great love, and a sex tape in the 1990s.
Dolly Wilde, the pride of Wolverhampton, her alcoholic loser father (a slightly more functional cousin to William H. Macy's character in Shameless), and rock star John Kite, the love of her life, are back in Moran's high-spirited and hilarious sequel to How To Build a Girl (2014). Dolly's quest to become a famous writer and sexual adventuress is going pretty well when she hits a major snag in the form of a well-known young comedian named Jerry Sharp. This misogynist pig of a man, whom she runs into at a concert for which he has no ticket and kindly gets him admitted, manages to get Dolly back to his apartment not once, but twice. It is the second encounter that produces the VHS tape that nearly ruins Dolly's life. New in this continuation of Dolly's story are two wonderful characters, aspiring musician Suzanne Banks and her assistant, Julia. "Most people are built around a heart, and a nervous system. Suzanne appeared to be built around a whirlwind, kept trapped in a black glass jar. She appeared never to think before she spoke, took a drink, or opened a bottle of pills....She was like a bomb that kept exploding over and over." Meanwhile, the levelheaded and embattled Julia has to keep reminding her employer that the guitar is held with the "strings at the front." Some of the best parts of the book are Dolly's writing—articles titled "Ten Things I Have Noticed in Two Years of Interacting With Famous People" and "In Defense of Groupies," and, best of all, a letter to her beloved Mr. Kite explaining why teenage girls are the most important fans of all, "a power grid of energy...splitting their own atoms with love." Set in a time three decades before #MeToo, Dolly's ultra-sex-positive feminism is honed by her experiences with the evil Sharp and her connections with other women.
Half feminist comedy, half romance novel—a genre whose time has come.Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-243377-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
IFC Films to Release How to Build a Girl Movie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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