I’ve read everything Dolly Alderton has written, so Good Material was not going to be an exception. This is part loyalty, based on how much I loved The High Low podcast when she was still making it with Pandora Sykes, part because I find her funny and relatable, and part because I am fascinated by books that are so instantly successful. All in all, I enjoyed Good Material – more so than Ghosts. Everything I Know About Love ranks higher for me, but perhaps that’s just because it’s a memoir (which I happened to read first), compared to Alderton’s fiction, which is very autobiographical.
Good Material, unlike all her previous writing, is from a man’s perspective, which is really interesting and shows her range – though I’d be interested to hear from men whether they agree it was as successful as I found it to be. Our protagonist, Andy, has been dumped by Jen, but has no idea what went wrong or why. He is convinced that there is a specific reason (like another man or her secret distaste for his job, something tangible) and that if he can pinpoint it, they’ll be able to get back together. But increasingly, it seems like he is clinging onto the concept of the relationship he thought he had, rather than the reality of it.
As well as heartbroken, Andy is a struggling comedian (so heartbroken in a few ways). Between long road-trips across the country to perform stand-up to crowds who could take or leave him as a comedian, and a stint trying to live on a houseboat as a newly defined bachelor… his life, which he thought was relatively settled at this stage in his 30s, is falling apart.
Can he turn it around? All his friends have busy families and careers; he thought that part of his life was checked off. How? From him, with some (but not a lot) of grace, a lot of alcohol, some questionable reconnections with ex-girlfriends, some even more questionable attempts at symbolic catharsis, and good humour. From Alderton? With charming, witty prose that leans on plenty of life experience as a modern 30-something making sense of the world.
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