Dolly Alderton's 2018 debut novel, Everything I Know About Love, won the 2018 autobiography of the year award and having just put down the book with a shaky breath, I can see why.
The book is written in episodic fragments, mostly in time chronological order as she turns from young adolescent to late twenty-year-old. At every single stage of Dolly's life, even the ones I haven't yet reached, I was nodding along to this seemingly shared experience of what is is like to be a human, and have our lives revolve around the central sun of 'love'.
The book transforms as it progresses, and we can feel Dolly growing up in the pages as we read them.
She cleverly summarises each age bracket with the lessons that she believed to be true at that age. But with every new milestone and set of new beliefs, Dolly reflects on the ones that came previously, eventually concluding that "nearly everything I know about love, I've learnt in my long-term relationships with women". Rather than only explore the 'epiphany' moment that answers the big search for love, she shares all the 'hard to confess', shameful, validation-seeking things that she once believed, and that we all believed along with her.
The book is full of date disasters, hilarious anecdotal stories, bizarre exchanges and hangover cures. Before beginning this book, I asked my own set of wonderful women (who have already read the book and repeatedly recommended it to me), whether I would cry if I were to read it on public transport, as I set off on my hour-long commute to work. I was met with mixed responses about how risky this may be, but one of my more steely friends, Daisy, told me that I'd be fine.
It was when I sat opposite a London businessman on my way back from Brighton and home to Devon for Christmas, that I knew Daisy had betrayed me. I was curled on the narrow train seat, feet up on the chair next to me despite being told off by the train conductor for doing so. Every single emotion must have been as plain as day on my face for all the funny looks I was getting over the top of the poor man's laptop. I would giggle to myself, flick forward a few pages, and suddenly be fighting tears as my eyes became glassy.
Now reflecting on the novel, I keep wanting to refer to Dolly and the people in her life as 'characters'. Having never really read non-fiction before, it was hard to believe that these exuberant stories weren't hallucinated during a particularly sweaty fever dream. But the fact that they are real people makes them all the more loveable; knowing that these bonds and experiences can and do exist in reality is even more satisfying than the fictionalised 'walk into the sunset' that romance tales tell us.
Of all of these characters, I actually found myself relating to Dolly the least. I’m not reckless and exciting and full of jaw-dropping stories. I'm not brave and spontaneous nor the life and soul of the party. But as I read about Dolly and her entourage, I saw snippets of each of my friends in turn. At times, it was as though I was reading the book from Farley's perceptive, or from India's or AJ's or Belle's. I was one of the people completely mesmerised by Dolly, looking inwards, rather than how she was looking out. As Dolly gushed about the women in her life, it made me gush over her. For in Dolly, I picked out Poppy's annoyingly wise advice, Izzy's constant and nonjudgemental support, and Jemima's fierce loyalty that would see her promise to hunt down any boy who ever hurt me, even if I had already forgiven them. By surrounding myself with my own cast of "Dolly-type" women, I was able to be awe-struck throughout.
And god does Dolly call you out for all your own bullshit. On multiple occasions, she drew me in with the fantastical promise of a happily ever after. I underlined pages and pages of one specific love story (I Got Gurued), completely absorbed with the way she described this love affair. I knew that all-consuming besotted type of love. But then things don't work out. And all I could think was, “ouch, she got me there”. I fell for the trap as she wrote it, even though she and I both know the ending to these particular stories. She strikes home the hard truths that we all want to ignore, but she tells them in such a way that gives you room to grow from them.
The novel is the perfect balance of sarcastic cynicism and giddy optimism that keeps it authentic and not cliched. Every early life recount of love had me smiling with familiarity, seeing my own gaggle of school friends in the pages. It also had me breathless, craving the presence of the women that I took for granted being able to spend all hours of the day with at a similar all-girls school, and now only see in person a few times a year. Most of us have read this book, I am one of the last, and we have all been singing its praises since.
I think it is such a magnetic read because of the warmth that is so reminiscent of something that is universally experienced as women in love (all forms of it: familial, platonic, romantic), even when the exact experiences of Dolly's fantastical life are not shared (unfortunately, we can't all get proposed to at JFK by an almost stranger).
I will be thinking about this book for a long time, and thrusting it into the hands of whoever has not read it yet.
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