Product Description

Just what does it mean to be a girl? Why is it not like being a boy? And why is that a good thing? Guardian columnist Lucy Mangan lifts the lid on the truth about being female. From your place within the family ('It's a girl! What a pity!') through the intricacies of what not to wear and who not to talk to, everything you need to know about losing your virginity, how to get along with your mother and get ahead in the workplace, this is a full and frank account of how it really is different for girls. Full of bittersweet memories and the sharpest observations, HOPSCOTCH & HANDBAGS may not be better than sex or shoes, but it is less messy and goes with everything.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67026 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

India Knight, Sunday Times, 26 August 2007
'Intelligent, wonderfully written and extremely funny... It is a joyous book... Buy it for your girlfriend, who will thank you profusely.'

Review

'Intelligent, wonderfully written and extremely funny... a joyous book'

From the Publisher
This is a brilliant book about being a girl, written for grown-up girls who don't want to read about the joys of flower pressing and French knitting. It's been a real pleasure to publish, and I'm going to tell you how, as a publisher, there are several ways you can spot that you've got a really good read on your hands:

1. There's a spontaneous round of applause when you announce its acquisition at the editorial meeting, and a gaggle of overexcited female publishers exclaim `I love Lucy Mangan!', even though they've never met her.
2. You begin to see just how spot-on Lucy's understanding of the female psyche is when your company's normally-sober rights director reads some early material on the train into work and laughs so hard she nearly has to get off a stop early.
3. Women in their twenties, thirties and forties flock to your office ravenous for more Mangan morsels. They stay a while to stroke the gorgeous jacket and marvel at the sparkly bits.
4. The ladies in the New Zealand office receive their sample text by email. It cleverly, and hilariously, dissects the ways of women in the workplace:
* how to keep crying in the loos to a minimum
* the preference for suicide over asking for a pay rise
* the art of giving birth in one's lunch hour so as not to appear weak in front of male colleagues.
The Kiwis gather around someone's desk - Jackanory-style - to have it read aloud to them and spend an afternoon laughing at themselves. No work gets done.
5. A finished book arrives on your desk and there's a stampede of high-heeled colleagues to your office. Under the pretext of business they're really jostling to get their grubby little paws on a freebie copy. `Go and buy your own', is your standard response. After all, that's what we're confident every discerning female will do...

Hopscotch & Handbags is the grown-up girl's guide to being female. What it does to perfection is remind us why it's so bittersweet to be a girl, but why it's always, always better than being a boy. Buy it for yourself, for your sister and your best pals.

Customer Reviews

yay! i'm not alone!
I never bother writing reviews because i very rarely come across anything i like enough to write one about, but this book is FANTASTIC. its witty, its charming, its brutal in its honesty, and best of all it made me feel a little less insane in a world where so many women are trying so hard to hide the crazy

Essential reading for a girl
I have not put my copy down since I received it. How could I, when reading this book is like reading about my life (except for the growing up in South London bit)? From the collecting of scented rubbers (erasers) and reading Judy Blume's Forever under cover of darkness where your mum can't find you, to the hideousness of being a spotty greasy teenage girl in a veritable sea of slender blonde nymphs, this book rings so true it's still painful. But rather than poking fun and making you feel even worse about yourself, Mangan makes it clear that she has been there- is stillthere even- and is rather like a good girlfriend who makes the best of a bad situation by finding the humour in it. I found myself having to stifle laughter when reading on public transport, in much the same way as I did when I first read Bridget Jones' Diary. I found half-forgotten memories of teenage fumbles and bad dates coming back to me. I found the accuracy of 'A Day in the Life' of a cohabiting couple was so cringingly hilarious that I had to put the book down for an hour.It really is a great read, not least because at the end of it you feel you have finally laid to rest all your girlish anxieties and are just bloody glad that you are no longer the spotty greasy awkward teenager.

Do read it. It really will make you smile.

Brilliant!
It's witty, it's hilarious, it's embarrassing. And it's all true!

And it solves the problem of all the 30th birthday presents I need to buy! Thank you Lucy!