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Your therapist suggested that I “write a letter to my ego”, so I’m sorry if I’m not gagging to hear whatever she advised.’
You’re the only person I can talk to about this stuff,’ I say, revolted by the baldness of my own love. ‘Please make sure Jane doesn’t tell him before I do.’ The male perspective is rarely the focus in romantic comedy, but Dolly Alderton’s new novel corrects the imbalance… Relatable, funny and refreshing.” Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. I read it when I was 24 and it completely changed the way I thought about consuming meat and fish. This is the greatest. You’ll cry and laugh. I read it through the night. And I never, ever avoid sleep Claudia Winkleman I really like Dolly Alderton‘s writing and this is another very well written novel. We first meet Andy when in 2019, he lists the reasons why he is not good with Jen. Yes, Andy I get it, she does sound pretty awful, but inexplicably, she breaks his heart when she dumps him. However, hold your horses, this is Andy‘s point of view so let’s just rein in the sympathy for now. The pair meet in 2015 at his best friend Ari’s birthday bash and all seems well until an ill-fated trip to Paris. Andy tells us his “progress” in a sort of journal form as he negotiates the different stages of the break up.I award it 13/10 on my QWJ scale (stands for Queasy With Jealousy that I didn't write it)' MARIAN KEYES There are many reasons, our narrator Andy asserts, that it is good he is no longer with Jen. “Talked too much and too smugly about coming from a big family,” for starters, “as if it was her decision to have three siblings.” Then, there is how she would “always boast about how she’d reject an OBE if it were offered to her” but “would definitely never reject an OBE”. Also: “Can’t drive (childish)”. “Talked at the cinema”. “Was too connected to dogs”. And the big one? “Ruined my life.”
Would never talk seriously about having children, despite knowing how much I want to be a dad, but would sometimes say ‘That’s one of my baby names’ to people in conversation. Then I realize: half of them were single four and a half years ago. None of them are now. Closer to fifty than twenty." Which isn’t to say Alderton’s take on the breakup novel is unoriginal or not worth reading. With Good Material, she proves herself once again as having both a deep understanding of the intricacies of relationships and the ability to articulate it better than the majority of us ever could. Genuinely laugh-out-loud funny – with characters straight out of a Richard Curtis film – whipsmart dialogue and relatable millennial themes (Alderton’s forte) mean there’s never a dull moment ... Thought-provoking and wise The Independent, Best New Books to Read This AutumnGood Material contains a lot that will resonate with anyone who has experienced a difficult breakup – bumping into your ex with their new partner and hoping the ground will swallow you whole; storing up the things you want to tell them – but ventures into enough other areas to have a broad appeal. Try writing this list. I think it will help you separate the fantasy of us from the reality of us, which I think you know deep down wasn’t working.’ In addition to following the progress of Andy’s recovery and meeting some very good characters along the way (Ari and Jane‘s children are hilarious for example), there are some excellent music references, some hair obsessing and hair envy, some other ventures where Andy tries to reinvent his 35-year-old self, with limited success. Her unbearable sister Miranda who carries nonsensical homemade signs at protests saying things like HISTORY IS WATCHING and who I know hates me because she always ranted about ‘straight white guys’ when she came round for dinner, no matter the topic. She used to say ‘Sorry, Andy’ but didn’t by the end.
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