Caitlin Moran's coming-of-age novel left Zoe Williams crying with laughter
Funny? That’s just the start … Caitlin Moran. Photograph: IBL/Rex Features
Often when a book comes along to which the phrase "coming-of-age" attaches, particularly if it's the product of my own gender and era, I set my face and aspect politely, readying, not to enjoy it, but to look as though I do, because I would hate to be one of those people from whom criticism might appear to be sour grapes or cynicism. This book has broken me for that; I was rocking with laughter in the library, crying with love on the tube. It has a Seinfeld-effect, where sheer buildup of amusement invests even the simplest word – "penis", "dry-cleaner" – with explosive power. It turns out I don't hate romans a clef after all. I just hadn't met the right roman a clef.
This is the story of a young girl, Johanna Morrigan, in Wolverhampton, growing up extremely poor with a feckless, alcoholic father and a mother with postnatal depression. She becomes a music journalist by the age of 17. It is impossible to ignore how much territory it shares with Moran's own life. There's a cocky disclaimer at the start – "this is a novel and it is all fictitious", as though anyone sifting it for clues would be guilty of failing to understand what "novel" means – but I admired the brio of that. She may as well have said, "screw you; think what you like".
Moran is an extremely accomplished comic writer, probably the most up-to-date exemplar of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours theory of genius. The vigour of her intent is there in every description. The smallest walk-on pisshead will get a line like "his tie looked like it had been put on by an enemy, and was strangling him". The timeline is pin accurate but casually thrown down, as if to say, "well, of course my mother would have compared me to Boutros Boutros-Ghali and not Pérez de Cuéllar, because it was real 1992, and not made-up 1992". A section in which Morrigan wins a poetry competition and appears on local TV is so deftly told that the bullying that comes after it just made me laugh more, guiltily, wishing I could stop.
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This is the story of a young girl, Johanna Morrigan, in Wolverhampton, growing up extremely poor with a feckless, alcoholic father and a mother with postnatal depression. She becomes a music journalist by the age of 17. It is impossible to ignore how much territory it shares with Moran's own life. There's a cocky disclaimer at the start – "this is a novel and it is all fictitious", as though anyone sifting it for clues would be guilty of failing to understand what "novel" means – but I admired the brio of that. She may as well have said, "screw you; think what you like".Moran is an extremely accomplished comic writer, probably the most up-to-date exemplar of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours theory of genius. The vigour of her intent is there in every description. The smallest walk-on pisshead will get a line like "his tie looked like it had been put on by an enemy, and was strangling him". The timeline is pin accurate but casually thrown down, as if to say, "well, of course my mother would have compared me to Boutros Boutros-Ghali and not Pérez de Cuéllar, because it was real 1992, and not made-up 1992". A section in which Morrigan wins a poetry competition and appears on local TV is so deftly told that the bullying that comes after it just made me laugh more, guiltily, wishing I could stop.
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