But the GirlBut the Girl is a wry and razor sharp coming of age novel about belonging, alienation, and the exquisite pleasure and pain of girlhood, for readers of The Idiot by Elif Batuman and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. 'I used to have this line I saved and brought out for grant applications and writers festivals that having been Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina and Esther Greenwood all my life, my writing was an opportunity for the reader to have to be me.'