parts of it, i just loved and laughted out loud. but a lot of it felt repetitive (her last book? other novels?) so a split score? 3-4 stars?

Man får næsten (næsten!) lyst til at være teenager igen!

I love Caitlin Moran, and her first foray into fiction was very entertaining! I loved the character she developed, and how well she showed how we can determine who we are as people.

Some elements felt a little rushed, but not enough to mar the book as a whole. I'll reread, and I'll definitely buy more Moran!

Reading this book was a really bizarre experience. I strongly disliked the first half and would have put it down, except I checked the reviews, and they were so positive that I decided to keep reading.

Something about the beginning was depressing to me, almost nauseating. I knew the book is semi autobiographical, and the best I could say was that I was impressed by the transformation into fiction.

The character initially felt like Eleanor, from ELEANOR AND PARK, as depicted through a Bridget Jones lens, shown in a Mike Leigh film, and then it seemed it was turning into "Almost Famous." Johanna/Dolly was game and madcap, with a plucky grin. And the other characters in the first section are mainly flat and thin, which left me with a sense of mistrust in the book. Dad is like the dad in a Mike Leigh film, or what I think of as basically any book set in a British council estate. Does Johanna honestly have zero friends? It doesn't seem like she would be friendless, and she mentions a couple of friends, but they have virtually no role, which is odd for a 14-year-old girl.

With my editor's hat on, I was dismayed by the inconsistencies. I figured out about two-thirds of the way through that Johanna shares a room with her brothers. When she goes to her first gig, she gives her hat and notebook to her dad and joins the mosh pit – then had to look for her hat and notebook, which were trashed in the mosh pit (but wait! She didn't have them there!). Etc.

To me, also, it was jarring and strange to go between all of the real-life bands and the fictional John Pike.

In the second half, or last third, though, Moran really got her claws into Dolly, and as Dolly grew up and became more introspective, I started to kind of love her, as well as some of the insights in the book, a few of which made me laugh out loud, like this exchange:

"I'm not a goth," I say, pressing the button on the stereo to make it rewind faster. "I just like wearing black. Like the Beatles in Hamburg. You wouldn't say they were goths."
"Do you write poetry?"
"Yes."
"Have you danced to 'Temple of Love' by Sisters of Mercy?"
"Well, who hasn't?"
"Have you imagined that Robert Smith from The Cure is your big brother?"
"That's a very common--"
"Would you leave the house without eyeliner?"
"I made a decision--"
"When you doodle, do you draw a picture of a sad willow tree, with all the leaves falling off?"
"You saw my pad!"
"You know what I've noticed?" Rob says, thinking. "You actually can't help it if you're a goth. It's in your genes. You're born that way--it's like being black. ..." (p. 269-270)


But there also are beautiful parts, like this:
"The cassette John has copied for me is Gainsbourg's Melody Nelson: it sounds incredibly, unbearably sexual. Dark and astonishing. Like a future I'm both scared of, and will run toward. Coupled with the letter, it pops a part of my child-brain, and I suddenly burst into tears.
I think I cry for at least half an hour--the kind of crying that is like rain where it starts without warning, and violently, but eases off into sudden rainbows, and blackbirds calling out in gratitude as they swoop across wet lawns. The weeping of relief." (p. 154)

And I thought Dolly's ultimate realization about who she is and what she needs to do to "build" herself was great. So in the very end, I liked it a lot, but remembering my disenchantment with the beginning, I wonder why it was as uneven as it was.

Fun, light, quirky but in many ways unrealized. I have been feeling a need to read less serious books lately -- the current global political situation has me maxed out and needing levity. This was a perfect pick for those purposes. The viewpoint is lefty, feminist, working class, and smart, and that is a viewpoint that is sorely lacking in popular fiction. Many of the characters are wildly exaggerated to elicit giggles and that is unfortunate. Moran makes her father, her brother, and her idol seem ridiculous, and the book would have been better if she had not done so. Still worth a read for anyone who loves random sex and good music.

There were moments that I really loved this book and in the end it came back to that for me. However, instead of feeling like fiction it often felt like reading Moran's autobiography with names and place slightly changed. Not just because of the content but because of the writing style--which was not different at all from her essays. It was hard to separate Dolly Wilde from Caitlin herself while in the middle and I kept having to remind myself it was fiction.

In the end I loved the message that you can change yourself and start over if you don't like how you are becoming and that your teen years really are for building yourself, only to realize that you're doing it all wrong. It was funny much of the time and crazy all of the time.

I skipped from page 158 to 321 and found out it ended exactly as expected. This one just didn't do it for me.

Got about halfway through it and got sucked into another book. I'd like to come back to this one again and finish.

Raunchy and laugh-out-loud funny. A few week spots with the plot/storyline, but forgivable.