Author: Caitlin Moran
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WORTHY!
My blog is nearly all about fiction - writing it, reading it, watching it, but once in a while I blog non-fiction. In this case, I'm assuming that this is mostly non-fiction, but I admit that sometimes I wondered, because this novel/biography has the same issues that I have with first person PoV fiction: how can the narrator possibly recall all these events in such detail?
It's not possible for someone to recall conversations not only word-for-word, but also the nuances attached to those words. At best you can have an impression, which may not even be accurate, of an exchange, and that's what I'm assuming went on here. Even if you keep a detailed diary, it's never that detailed! Even if you wrote the conversation down shortly after it occurred, you can't recall it that precisely. That said, this book was endlessly entertaining, enlightening in some parts, and LoL hilarious at times.
There were some portions which fell flat for me, but very few. It helped that Moran is British so I had many common reference points with her which may be lost on American readers, although some of her writing is surprisingly mid-Atlantic. Maybe the UK has gone over to the American side a lot more than it had when I lived there.
Essentially, this story is highlights (or low-lights if you like) from Caitlin's (real name Catherine, pronounced Catlin - you'll have to read it to figure that out!) youth to the present (present when it was written, of course!), but with the focus tightly on feminine issues. She begins with her period making her see red, followed closely by public hair (well, it was pubic, but it's not now she's written a best-selling book about it...), and from there she rants on about breasts, feminism, bras, panties, obesity, genderism, love, marriage, abortion, role models, and fashion.
I highly recommend this. It beats anything else that I've ever read on feminism, and it has some new and interesting points of view to share.
