Review by New York Times Review
what to read and why By Francine Prose. (Harper, $23.99.) The novelist and critic combines previously published essays, reviews and introductions with some new writing to offer a wonderful reading list, ranging from Jane Austen to Jennifer Egan, cat flap By Alan S. Cowell. (St. Martin's, $24.99.) Cowell, a former foreign correspondent for The Times, tells a story with a Kafkaesque twist. A woman discovers that while away on a business trip, she has left part of her consciousness behind in the body of her cat. how to be famous By Caitlin Moran. (Harper, $26.99.) Moran, the British author of "How to Build a Girl," centers this novel on a 19-year-old journalist for a music magazine. Her unrequited love for a rock star and the unbridled pursuit of fame and fortune land her in some predictable trouble, obama By Brian Abrams. (Little A, $24.95.) For his fourth oral history - after producing books on "Late Night With David Letterman," Gawker and the film "Die Hard" - Abrams turns to no less than the Obama administration. It's the first comprehensive attempt at such a project, bringing together the anecdotes and eyewitness accounts of dozens of people who were part of the Obama White House, from cabinet secretaries to speechwriters. south toward home By Julia Reed. (St. Martin's, $25.99.) A contributor to Garden & Gun magazine and a resident of New Orleans, Reed writes a paean to the spirit and culture of the South. "There could be no better moment to read FLIGHT AGAINST TIME, by the acclaimed Lebanese author Emily Nasrallah, who died in March. The novel, set at the start of Lebanon's civil war in 1975 and published in 1981, throbs with detail about specifically Lebanese landscapes and social dynamics, yet it also encompasses themes roiling global politics today, from refugee crises to wrenching questions of identity. Reading it days after moving away from Beirut, where we lived blocks from Nasrallah for six years, I am particularly susceptible to her description of Radwan, an aging rural grandfather gazing at his village as he leaves to travel for the first time outside Lebanon. 'Suddenly he felt waves of strange tenderness that flowed from his heart, welled up in his eyes and ran down in tears,' she writes. 'Even the atoms of dust flying around him and settling on his shoes were as dear as gold. Radwan makes his way to Canada, where his children have emigrated. But he finds himself unsure where he fits: a new world of strange surroundings or back home where most of 'the young ones' have fled and where it may no longer be safe to return." - ANNE BARNARD, BEIRUT BUREAU CHIEF, ON WHAT SHE'S READING.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 2, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
In this follow-up to How to Build a Girl (2014), Johanna Morrigan is 19 and living her midnineties-London dreams: a solo flat and a music-writing career as her alter ego, Dolly Wilde. Catchy Britpop reigns, and though she loves Oasis and Blur as much as everyone else does, she can't help but notice how bloke-y the movement and the magazine she writes for are. She quits, lands a new gig as a fame columnist, and befriends the wildly fun Suzanne, front woman of an exciting new band. After a video of Johanna having sex (and bad sex at that) with a famous comedian circulates, she is devastated until she finds a way to regain her power in the situation. She is still secretly head-over-heels for John Kite even more complicated now that he is gobsmackingly famous. But she has something to say about the way he and so many other men ridicule the fandom of teenage girls; after all, she is one herself. Moran's funny, female-centric writing is a treasure, and despite the throwback setting, this feels just right for 2018.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Moran's rollicking second novel (after How to Build a Girl) characteristically combines nonstop witticisms with razor-sharp, pointed, and timely cultural critique. Johanna Morrigan (pen name Dolly Wilde) is making her way at 19 in mid-'90s London writing for a music magazine and intent on cultural and sexual adventure. As her ambition and wit propel her further into the world of celebrity in the age of Britpop, she encounters unexpected triumphs, but also challenges: workplace harassment; sexual imbalances of power; and the outsized role of gender in art and criticism, fame and fandom. Moran's depiction of London is detailed and exuberant, and a convincing backdrop for her unflinching exploration of these issues (though the language used to describe them sometimes seems anachronistically plucked straight from 2018 and #MeToo). Better still, her characters are madcap and lovable but nuanced enough to feel real: Dolly's friend Suzanne is strident and wise but also self-centered and irresponsible; her family is loyal but dysfunctional; and her true but unrequited love, John Kite, is a sweet and genuine musical talent who poorly manages his newfound fame. With Dolly, Moran has created an excellent heroine that readers will enjoy spending a summer day with. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this sequel to her debut, How To Build a Girl, Moran returns to the story of Dolly Wilde. At 19, she's on her own in London, writing about new music for a popular British magazine and living her dream, until she falls in love with young musician John Kite, who suddenly leaves her behind as he makes it big in the 1994 music scene. John and Dolly are friends, but she doubts he would ever want more, so she decides to start a monthly column on all the aspects, good and bad, of being famous. Dolly's a talented writer, but sometimes she makes bad decisions, like having a one-night stand with a famous comedian. Slut-shaming soon follows, which in light of the #MeToo movement makes this book both timely and important. Eventually, Dolly pushes through the pain, turns the shame into her own kind of fame, and wins the man of her dreams. VERDICT With an indelible protagonist and a wicked sense of humor, Moran's topical, feminist fiction will appeal to strong women of any age.-Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
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 writingarticles 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 novela genre whose time has come. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
