Everything I Know About Love is the book you should read this year.
In her debut memoir, Dolly Alderton takes you through the trials and errors of dating in your 20’s. Wickedly funny and filled in with moments of doubt, insecurity and adoration Alderton seals herself as a storyteller. Alderton passes from being in the position of author to including you, slowly and then all at once, within her narrative with her encompassing writing style. There’s a moment in the book you sink into her stories so deeply, they begin to feel like your own.
While I cannot relate to everything (the mention of the AOL dial up tone for one) the wracked insecurity I can. The feeling and understanding love is meant to complete me, a destination of fate told to us so convincingly, I can. The terrifying realisation that perhaps, love is not. I related, and still do, to these feelings Alderton bares to us.
Everything I Know About Love has been eagerly anticipated on the social-media sphere. Garnering a following as the Sunday Times dating columnist, the PanDolly podcast and now part of the podcasting duo of The High Low Show (a podcast I recommend to you), Dolly Alderton cast a spell on my social networking feed. And I can tell you – there is very good reason for that.
The memoir is filled with rocky moments and frank observations from what it means to a woman, a woman in love and a woman undone. We are taken on to a story well told; the dating life in your roaring twenties, the success, the laughter, the innocence and the bohemia of it all. Searing and sometimes scorching with honesty, she puts it truthfully. She does not shy away. Here the author reforms what it means to be in your 20’s. The loneliness, the dating pros and cons, the growing up but with an ending so unexpected I cried.
Everything I Know About Love is a stunning debut that lives up to the hype, and more so.
You can find Dolly at the Aye Write festival on 24th March.
