A book for boys

If Time Magazine declared 2011 the year of the protester, then it seems quite fitting that, in a public vote, the  Galaxy Book Awards crowned Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman their book of the year. Touted as a modern day feminist call-to-arms, it is also the memoirs of a former music journalist turned Times commentator professional tweeter (hashtag commentweeter).

It’s sort of a roughed up version of Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée but funnier and relocated to the messy days of the late seventies, as if S de B had dumped her drain of a boyfriend and had plonked herself next to you at a party, triple shot of gin and (full fat) tonic in hand. Less Parisian and more Wolverhampton, mind you.

Of course, if we’re going to be po-faced, it all seems rather trivial compared to Beauvoir’s political radicalism or recent news that women are being stripped and beaten by policemen in Tahrir Square, and that Afghan women are routinely coerced into marrying their rapist.