Alderton

At the start of Good Material, we meet Andy, a 35-year-old standup comic who is trying to get over a breakup and listing the reasons why he is better off without his ex-girlfriend, Jen. These include her inability to drive a car, being “too connected to dogs”, having weird parents and lingering for too long in museums “at every artefact or painting … once saw her nod respectfully at a TINY JADE SPOON in the British Museum.”Dolly Alderton’s richly entertaining second novel is a chronicle of a relationship in its death…

Andy Dawson and Jen Bennett are a seemingly devoted couple in their mid-30s. He’s an affable C-list standup comedian; she’s a high-flying corporate type. They have been together for four years when, after a minibreak to Paris, apropos of nothing – at least as far as Andy is concerned – Jen announces that they need to part ways. With distinct notes of Helen Fielding, Richard Curtis and Nick Hornby, Dolly Alderton’s warm and generous second novel follows Andy’s subsequent tailspin.This anatomisation of a breakup and its…

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…