Good Material

Often referred to as the Nora Ephron for millennials, Dolly Alderton has emerged as a prominent voice on modern relationships and self-discovery. Through her memoir Everything I Know About Love, which details the relationship foibles of her twenties and has sold 800,000 copies, and in her debut novel Ghosts, Alderton exhibits a keen understanding of the complexities of love and relationships. Alderton’s work explores the realities of young adulthood, friendship, and the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated world. With a technique of finding comedy in everyday absurdities, Alderton’s work aims to be relatable to her audience and to maintain a sense of intimacy and connection with the reader. Alderton’s writing is distinctly contemporary, reflecting the realities of modern dating and relationships. Her characters are often flawed and complex, grappling with issues such as self-doubt, anxiety, and the pressures of social media prevalent today.

Though Alderton did go through a painful breakup while writing Good Material, she asserts that the book isn’t about her. Since most of her audience identifies as female and all her previous work focuses on the female viewpoint of modern relationships, Alderton wrote her second novel from the male perspective to challenge herself as a writer and better understand men. She says that writing from Andy’s perspective was an exercise in empathy and imagination and unlocking the mystery of the male side of a heterosexual breakup. For her research, Alderton interviewed 15 men about their experiences with heartbreak, and her findings were unsurprising to her in many ways. All the men, regardless of age and background, reported that, despite having many male friends, they didn’t feel that there was a place for them to openly discuss the humiliation, frustration, and despair of being dumped. Alderton discovered that many men not only have a deficiency in emotional support, but they also don’t have the cultural experience or language to process a breakup.

In her 20 hours of interviews, Alderton learned that men feel they have an allotted time to speak about the breakup with their friends, and for fear of boring them or compromising their dignity, they shut up and move on. The findings also showed that men behave similarly to women (in Alderton’s experience) after a breakup, feeling abandoned and humiliated. Still, all the interviewees agreed that, like Andy, having sex with a new person for the first time is thrilling and makes them temporarily forget about their ex. In her author’s note, Alderton thanks all the men she interviewed by name and said, “I couldn’t have written Andy, or his friends, or this book, without you” (Hall, Lucy. “‘I’ve Always Wanted To Write Something From the Male Perspective’: Dolly Alderton On Heartbreak, Finding Inspiration, and Her New Novel Good Material.” Penguin, 16 Nov. 2023).