Written by Jennifer Donohue
The back of How to Build a Girl invites you to “Imagine The Bell Jar — written by Rizzo from Grease.”
Johanna Morrigan, comes to a brutal understanding that she must die. Not literally, of course, but the person she is? Not of any use to her. So at fourteen, she lays out all the things she wants to be, all the people whose qualities she wants to emulate, and absorbs them as her own. She picks a career goal which matches the clothes she’s adopted: she will be a music journalist. Her new name is Dolly Wilde (after Oscar Wilde’s drug-addicted, lesbian niece), and she paints the new face upon her own and sallies forth into the scene.
Moments of hilarious heartbreak are throughout the story. Johanna/Dolly is a character who is intelligent for her surroundings, well-read, and who experiences the frustration of making jokes or references nobody else understands. She’s self-aware enough to know when a situation is going terribly wrong, but doesn’t necessarily know how to fix it. There is also the poignant dichotomy of loving her mad family, but wanting (needing) desperately to get away from them. Even in her carefully constructed persona it’s difficult, as her father is a self-styled musician who’s just waiting for the break, just one break.
There’s some valuable advice for writers to be found here, both in Dolly’s early stages of identity construction and later. Proofreading. Persistence. That to be a writer, one must write, only it isn’t so easy to find the words. Except when it is. That, depending on the venue, one must never write as a fan. Except when one always must write as a fan (emphasis not in the original text).
Towards the end, she begins to learn the value of being her own champion instead of just relentlessly throwing elbows to get in line for the pat on the head. And that is when Dolly realizes she has taken herself a bit too far and needs to tear things down again. How to Build a Girl is a literal illustration of the identity struggles people encounter growing up, with the added revelation people can still always choose to change if what they’ve established isn’t working for them.
How to Build a Girl is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Goodreads.
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