Rose and Solange are lifelong friends, growing up together in 1980s France. Their paths are intertwined, yet they enter adulthood on radically different paths: Rose, who prizes stability above all else, studies psychology and marries her first love, Christian; Solange has numerous affairs, becomes pregnant at fifteen, gives birth to a baby boy, and pursues an acting career. Each tries to find her own happiness, her own sense of meaning, while navigating a world which seeks to establish binary ideas of what a woman can be. How to Make a Woman is a bold, sometimes brutal, coming-of-age novel from the award-winning novelist Marie Darrieussecq.