BookLife Review by Carol O’Day: Good Material: A Novel (Dolly Alderton, author)
Contemporary fiction, romance, break up, heartbreak, obsession, social media, mid-thirties, failure to launch, adulting, stand-up comedian, independent woman, career-relationship balance, sacrifice.
BookLife Review by Carol O’Day: Good Material: A Novel (Dolly Alderton, author)
Andy is a 35 year-old struggling stand-up comedian, flummoxed by his girlfriend’s decision to end their multi-year relationship. He hides burrows in his grief. He obsesses, social media stalks and whines a lot. He is both devastated and dumbfounded by his break up.. Jen is a professional woman who works in insurance in London and was initially charmed and enthralled with Andy. Their romance was bolstered by the overlap in their friends–Andy’s best mat, Ari, is married to Jen’s bestie. The two couples fell quickly and easily into a group, though Jane and Ari have two small boys and clearly exist in a different plane of adult life than Andy.
After the breakup, Andy lands first at his single mother’s flat outside of the city, as he moves his feeble collection of belongings in and out of storage in search of new digs. He then spends a stint on a mattress in Ari and Jane’s attic. Ultimately he lands in a shared flat with elderly Morris, a lonely curmudgeon, who is one of the most lovingly and fully, if sparsely, written characters in the book. Andy’s comedy act is stale and and stalled, and he cobbles together a series of corporate gigs and product demonstrations to pay the rent. Mostly though, he wallows. He assembles friends, most of who have moved on to more mature relationships and life stages, and frequents pubs, together with them and often alone, puzzling back and forth and back again about how Jen could have opted out of their relationship when it felt so solid to Andy. The more he wallows and whines and seems to do very little to advance his life, the harder it is to garner sympathy for him.
In the very last, and brilliant, chapter of the book, we hear the story and the rationale for the break up from Jen’s point of view. The writing in Jen’s voice is as strong as her story is complex and admirable. Jen cares for Andy, even loves him, but again and again she asks herself if she wants any relationship at all, marriage or kids, or whether she just may be happier and more content pursuing her career and independence, accountable only for herself. The reader has seen, in spades already, Andy’s best and worst qualities, his humor and tenderness, and his insecurity, lack of motivation and ambition and his deep aching need for approval and support. The genius of this book is that it does not alternate points of view between Andy and Jen throughout. It stands fully and firmly in Andy’s addled and wounded brain, immersing the reader in his perspective, his winning humor, and his very humanness. By holding out until the very last chapter, Alderton magnifies the impact of both characters’ points of view by delivering missing pieces of the puzzle that bring everything into focus. There is a deep “aha” for the reader in ultimately reaching the final chapter, filling in many missing pieces and understanding a fuller picture of the relationship previously seen only from Andy’s point of view. Full disclosure, it takes a great deal of forbearance to stick with whiny, immature Andy for the duration of the book. But getting to Jen makes it worth the ride.
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