In her first book, Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton told her personal story of growing up and coming to understand what love was to her. Now, in her first novel Ghosts, she moves on to telling all of our stories.
Ghosts belongs to anyone who has been on a dating app. Anyone who has felt abandoned by friends. Anyone who’s felt less than, or left behind. Anyone who has, yes, been ghosted. Anyone who has turned up to their parents’ house one day and realised they’re not 30-something anymore… and actually, you are. It’s for anyone who’s been to a hen party. It’s yours if you’ve got a nuisance neighbour, a true best friend or pivoted career. It’s yours if you love the bones of George Michael.
It’s safe to say most people will have found themselves somewhere on that tick-list, and of course, that’s the magic of Alderton’s writing – here and elsewhere – her deep understanding of the life of a modern woman and the ease with which she creates relatability on the page. Whether she’s talking about dating, friendships, parents or career, the stories she tells are so relatable that by the end of the book you’ll have neck ache from nodding in recognition.
READ MORE: 'I'm Not Your Friend:' Dolly Alderton On Friend Culling
Instead of Alderton (co-presenter of the hugely successful High Low podcast), this time we’re following the life of Nina George Dean, who we meet on her 32nd birthday and follow over the next year of her life. Nina – a successful writer of cookery books - is single and making her first foray onto the dating apps. She meets Max, who seems to be perfect. Maybe it’s because you’re reading a novel called ‘Ghosts’ - or just because the 20 and 30-something women have learned nothing if not that anything that seems to good to be on a dating app, definitely is – but as a reader the red flags start to appear before Nina sees them. It’s part of a feeling that you get throughout the book – that you’re Nina’s unseen friend, that you could jump into the restaurant with her and friend Lola, to chip in your thoughts.
Meanwhile, Nina’s tackling the changing relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Joe, the strange metamorphosis of her friends into women unlike herself and – poignantly – her father’s descent into dementia and the effect it has on her relationship with her mother.
Buy Dolly Alderton's books:
Throughout it all, conversations you’ve had or observations you’ve made (and even perhaps not even fully been able to vocalise yourself) or feelings you’ve secretly felt, zing from the page. After her first date with Max she realises she can’t quite remember what he looks like and plays snatched memories over and over in her mind ‘like four separate canapes at a party. Once I’d had enough of memory platter one, I’d take a bite from memory platter two,’ she writes. As with Everything I Know About Love, she nails friendship too: ‘If there’s one visible warning sign that a friendship has become faulty, it’s the point when you realise you only ever want to go to the cinema with them.’
Of the apps, she writes: ‘I quickly identified another type of man on the app who I labelled “pretend boyfriend man”. Pretend Boyfriend Man used his profile to push an agenda of a dreamy, committed reliability. His photo selection always included an image of him holding a friend’s baby or worse, stripping wallpaper or sanding a floor with his top off. He used supposedly throwaway phrases such as, “on the lookout for a wife” or “my dream evening? Snuggling on the sofa while watching a Sofia Coppola film”.’ A small criticism (by way of a compliment really) is that I could’ve read more exploring the dating scene – the revolving door nature of it, the 3am messages, the different dates we’ve all been on - whether they’ve gone on for days, or just about survived while clinging to a glass of red for dear life.
As with all of those excerpts, the deeper Alderton drills into the specifics, the Sofia Coppola films or the wallpaper stripping, the more universal the appeal becomes – it’s a clever trick that will see the book become a must-read for thousands of women. And, to be honest, should be handed out in certain circles of men.
In an interview with BBC news, Alderton said: ‘I just don't want to write about my personal life anymore, I have neither the inclination nor the strength to do that,’ she explains. ‘Not to say that I regret doing that. I'm really glad I did that for that period of my life. But any desire to do that has completely left me now.’
She added: ‘Put simply, my first book was all my good stories.’ For those racing to the end of Ghosts, that’s one thing readers will probably have to agree to disagree with Alderton on.
SEE MORE: The 30 Best Books Of The Last Three Decades
