Suddenly INFAMOUS
SHE’S GAINED FAME FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS
There’s sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, plus lots of bad language in this novel. It is rude and crude, but it’s also thought-provoking and a very funny take on issues everyone is talking about right now.
How to Be Famous is actually a sequel, but it’s not a big deal if you haven’t read the previous instalment, How to Build a Girl, because this book works well enough as a stand alone.
Johanna Morrigan, aka music journalist Dolly Wilde, is 19 and living alone in London at the height of the Britpop era. She has escaped her eccentric family – or at least thinks she has – and life seems rich with excitement and possibilities.
But then Dolly has an unpleasant sexual encounter with well-known comedian Jerry Sharpe. Impressed by his fame, she ends up falling into bed with him a second time, at which point he films the encounter. Inevitably this sex tape creates a lot of misery.
Fortunately Dolly has her friends on her side – in particular the older, fiercer, crazier Suzanne – and it soon emerges that Dolly is far from the only woman who’s been treated this way by the awful Jerry.
Although the book is set in the mid-’90s, there is a very obvious parallel to the #MeToo movement of today and there’s no missing its feminist message which is very much shouted out. Subtlety is not author Caitlin Moran’s forte. What you turn to her for is fizzy prose, mad brilliance and exciting exuberance – and there’s plenty of all that in here.
I did get the sense this is a novel that was written in a rush – there were lots of typographical errors and the story derails a bit in the middle, then manages to get back on track. Also, Caitlin Moran might be pushing it in terms of using her own life for material. There is a déjà vu quality to this novel if you’ve read much of her previous work.
So not perfect, but still funny and scrappy, crazy and fun – which is quite an achievement for a story based around such a serious topic.