“ A deeply satisfying tale of sex, drugs, britpop, unrequited love, London, and a narrator I completely adore. This is funny, philosophical, and poignant in equal measure. Glorious and life-enhancing ”
NINA STIBBE, Sunday Times bestselling author of Love, Nina
“ Who better than Caitlin Moran to bring fame down to earth with a bump ”
HELEN FIELDING, bestselling author of Bridget Jones's Diary
“ The dazzlingly gifted Moran makes mythic the maligned, misunderstood, momentous 1990s. Prose crackling and fizzing with charm, mischief and passion, she is the sharpest, funniest, most influential writer of her generation, which is also my generation, annoyingly ”
STUART MACONIE
“ It's quite a ride, this book. It's laugh-out-loud funny, sweetly romantic and fiercely angry. Often all at once ... beautifully written ”
THE TIMES
“ Moran's words are, as always, kind, tender and achingly funny. This is a real love letter to teenage girls and North London - if this book was a popstar I'd be putting its posters up on my wall and doodling its name all over my Maths book ”
DAISY BUCHANAN, bestselling author of How To Be A Grown-Up
“ On every page you'll find yourself tits-deep in word treasure. A filthy, gutsy, exhilarating call to arms ”
EMMA-JANE UNSWORTH, bestselling author of Animals
“ Brilliantly funny, caustic social commentary with the best-wish fulfilment revenge scene I've read, like, ever ”
THE POOL
“ A rollicking fantasy which leaves a rosy afterglow ”
Book of the Day, GUARDIAN
“ A glorious life-affirming love letter to teenage girls, pop music, best friends and that one guy you'll never get enough of ”
RED MAGAZINE
“ A machete-sharp follow up [to How to Build a Girl] ... boasts a rogue's gallery of brilliant characters familiar to anyone who has ever read the NME ”
IRISH INDEPENDENT
“ This gloriously rude, rambunctious read, finds Moran applauding the much-maligned music choices of teenage girls, figuring out the rules of how to be famous and celebrating the importance of getting good and angry about the rubbish stuff that happens to young women ”
Best New Fiction Pick, EVENT MAGAZINE, MAIL ON SUNDAY
“ Funny feminist Johanna Morrigan is back...a rude, raucous and necessary book ”
Psychologies Magazine
“ A fist-pumping celebration of being female. In the same way that many of us will have recognised our twenty-year-old selves in Cat Person, most women will see something of their teenage sexual encounters in this book ”
IMAGE MAGAZINE
“ a gloriously acute and funny writer...naturally the book is peppered with jokes, Moran's trademark wordplay and some snappy one-liners...warm and insightful ”
Financial Times
“ An electric roundhouse kick to the heart. Warm, piercing, sexy and fucking hilarious ”
LAUREN BEUKES, bestselling author of The Shining Girls
“ As you'd expect from award-winning Moran, this book is brash, razor-sharp and full of heart ”
SMALLISH MAGAZINE
Hardback
9780091948986
July 15, 2018
Ebury Press
320 pages
Trade Paperback
9780091956721
July 2, 2018
Ebury Press
320 pages
Paperback
9780091948993
July 16, 2019
Ebury Press
320 pages
ONE
When I was eleven, I formally resigned from the family dream.
From the earliest moment I can recall, the family dream was simple: that, one day, we would get money from somewhere – win the pools, discover a medieval chalice at a jumble sale, or, least likely of all, earn the money – and leave Wolverhampton.
‘When the bomb drops, we want to be on the other side of those,’ Dadda would say, at the end of our street – pointing across the flat fields of Shropshire, to the distant Black Mountains. We practically lived in the country.
‘If they nuke Birmingham, the fallout won’t reach Wales – those mountains are like a wall,’ he would add, nodding. ‘We’ll be safe there. If we get in the van and drive like fuckers, we’d be over the border in two hours.’
It was the mid-eighties, when we knew, for a fact, that the Russians would launch a nuclear war against the West Midlands at some point – the threat was so visceral that Sting even had written a song about it, warning that it would, by and large, be bad – so we were absolutely braced for it.
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