"Casually smutty, very funny, and barely disguising a serious intent. The joy of this easy-read novel is not just the scrappy protagonist." - NPR's Fresh Air "Brilliantly observed, thrillingly rude and laugh-out-loud funny." - Helen Fielding, author of Mad About the Boy and Bridget Jones's Diary Praise for How to Build a Girl: "Wonderfully wise and flat-out hilarious." - People, Book of the Week "Vivid and full of truths. There's a point in midlife, when you're already built, as it were, when the average coming-of-age story starts to feel completely uninteresting. But Moran is so lively, dazzlingly insightful and fun that "How to Build a Girl" transcends any age restrictions." - San Francisco Chronicle "A joyous, yelping novel about learning to love things without apology or irony.
Moran reminds us that playing it cool is a waste of time." - NPR "Hilarious." - Esquire "A subversive celebration of strong, smart young women." - The Seattle Times "Sparkly and joyous.Moran writes with a fierce and tender protectiveness of teenage girls like Johanna, who are chewed up and spat out by the glamorous adult worlds they are trying to make their way into." - Vox "Buckle up for the magical mystery tour that is life with Dolly Wilde.Stylewise, Ms. Moran is a breath of fresh air in the often stuffy, overly serious world of women's fiction.
Her sentences cackle with sass but also reveal the vulnerability that lies beneath many a modern woman's confident exterior. The heart of Ms. Moran's feminist fairy tale, however is its celebration of woman as they are, and not how society would have them be." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Glorious and life-enhancing. Funny, philosophical, and poignant in equal measure." - Nina Stibbe, AARP Magazine "Laugh-out-loud funny, sweetly romantic and fiercly angry. Often all at once." - London Times "A rollicking fantasy.
How to be Famous rewrites a familiar near-past heroically, dispensing justice and leaving a rosy, satisfied afterglow." - The Guardian "Wonderfully original.Hilarious summer fare with a feminist twist." - People "Moran's semiautobiographical tale of a young writer finding her way in the mid-90s London rock scene pops and fizzes with the energy of those cool Britannia times--but her smart, nervy take on female selfhood and sexuality feels bracingly of now." - Entertainment Weekly "How to Be Famous bursts open the coming-of-age drama and leaves, in its wake, a hilarious, utterly original, unabashedly feminist comedy. Just read it." - Refinery29 "Rallying cries will always have a place in a yet-unfinished movement like feminism, but sometimes storytelling is more effective. The fictional Johanna Morrigan never drops the F-word, but readers can see she's asking all the right questions.
" - New York Times Book Review "High-spirited and hilarious . Half feminist comedy, half romance novel--a genre whose time has come." - Kirkus "Funny, warm, insightful. Moran has always been a gloriously acute and funny writer, and the combination of memoir and make-believe here gives her plenty of scope to exercise her considerable ability to entertain." - Financial Times "Moran's funny, female-centric writing is a treasure . this feels just right for 2018." - Booklist.