At a time when feminism is grimly engaged in disappearing up its own intersection (two transsexuals squabbling over a tampon is the image that comes to mind) Caitlin Moran is to be bravo’d till the sacred cows come home for bringing her super-brightness to bear on this most vital of subjects. Like the rest of the western world and its stepdaughters, I loved How To Be a Woman and was excited to see what she would come up with next; when I heard it would be a novel, I was a little underwhelmed, having read her previous attempt at Young Adult fiction, The Chronicles of Narmo.
When I realised in the opening chapter that it was another novel about a big family, I felt very tired; in my experience, people from big families like to believe that we only children go around permanently traumatised from not having had anyone to share our toys with. But in reality, we look at them sadly not out of bitter envy but through sheer molten pity. Who on earth ever wanted to grow up sharing a bedroom in Bedlam?
There’s a lot about masturbation here — as much an age of coming as a coming of age novel — and the ensuing embarrassment which follows from treating oneself as a moveable feast while surrounded by siblings. But once you’ve shaken off these early indicators of a sordid shambles, things get really good. Moran’s writing is frequently magical in its throwaway precision; a man’s tie ‘looks like it has been put on by an enemy’, while kissing ‘is brilliant: I would put it just below telly but definitely above drinking, squeezing blackheads or fairgrounds’.
She writes with breathtaking brio, like a great professional hoofer who has been toe-tapping since tot-hood but has never grown tired of performing: very much a ‘Ta-da! — see what I did there?’ type of writer.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in