Dolly Alderton knows a thing or two about mining life’s most intimate moments for creative material. Her hit memoir Everything I Know About Love distilled lessons learned the messy way in her 20s about romance in all its guises, and when she later published her debut novel, Ghosts, its plot felt tantalisingly autobiographical, centring on a successful young writer’s app-enhanced attempts at finding a lasting relationship. Good Material is her second novel and it allows Alderton to reflect on heartbreak-as-muse while simultaneously propelling her into a more definitively fictional realm, narrated as it is by a male protagonist.
His name is Andy and he’s a 35-year-old jobbing comedian who was still awaiting his big break when Jen, his girlfriend of three years, 10 months and 29 days, dumped him. Or as he puts it, “smashed my heart like a sinewy pinata”. She says it’s because she wants to be single but he doesn’t believe her, and is convinced that if he can only determine the real reason, they may yet reunite.
As he engages in some high-level cyberstalking while obsessively monitoring his bald spot, trying to kickstart his career, and navigating the daunting practicalities of living in London unaided by Jen’s corporate salary, Alderton entertains with observational quips about thirtysomething life. Like how you always feel as though you’ve turned up at the very worst moment when visiting friends who have young children.
She conjures up some plausible maxims, too, enlightening readers about “The Flip” (the change in power that occurs in every relationship doomed to failure) or the 90/10 rule (rebounders will invariably gravitate to people who embody the crucial 10% that was missing in their otherwise fine exes).
There’s a distinctly Hornbyesque charm to her well-meaning characters and their relatable dramas. The dialogue is excellent throughout and the prose, consistently solid, sometimes gleams. Here’s Andy recalling the moment Jen kissed him for the first time: “I felt tiny and enormous; like I was her toy and her king.”
His lovelorn misadventures will prove to be the making of him but the novel closes with a short section told from Jen’s point of view. It’s a clever way of tying up loose ends that also accentuates the extent to which this affable, satisfying tale is out to defy some of the most stubbornly conservative tropes of romantic fiction.
Good Material by Dolly Alderton is published by Fig Tree (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
