Tuesday 9 August 2011

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran

Caitlin Moran is a British journalist who writes columns for The Times, and How to Be A Woman is part autobiography and part feminist rant.  It tells of her working class background and experiences and also includes her views on being a woman and on feminist issues such as abortion and beauty myths.

This book was OK.  The conversational style made it easy to read and it was funny at points.  Coming from a working class background myself, I could relate to Moran's experiences and she wrote about growing up as a girl in late 20th century England very well.

However, after this enjoyable section of the book the rest became very disjointed.  Her experiences as an adult were randomly spliced with the parts about feminism.  And although these parts were interesting, she was hardly writing anything I hadn't heard before.  If you want feminism, there are lots of books I would recommend over this one.  And if you disregard the feminism parts, all you have left is a very average memoir.

I don't want to be too harsh about this book, as I did enjoy reading it and it wasn't horribly written; I just wouldn't recommend it to others.

Verdict: OK read, funny in places.
Source: Bought it for my kindle
Score: 2.5 out of 5

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for your honest thoughts on this one. I don't read alot of memoirs, so when I do, I want it to be something pretty special.

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  2. The BookGirl - I agree, memoirs can be hit and miss. They need to be very well written for me to enjoy them.

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  3. I am currently reading this at the moment - and I am enjoy her memoirs but the feminist rants are not so well structured and I feel she is just ranting at the reader and not asking them to think about what she is trying to put across.

    I will finish it though.

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  4. Jo, I felt the same way about the rants, and I also felt like this book couldn't decide what it wanted to be - memoir or feminism. Have you read the bit about Lady Gaga yet? It was very random.

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  5. Thank you for being honest about the book . I love reading a well written memoir and it's pure torture trying to read one that isn't

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