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Everything I know about Love by Dolly Alderton

“When I’m a single woman in London I will be extremely elegant and slim and wear black dresses and drink martinis and will only meet men at book launches and at art exhibition openings.”- Dolly Alterton, Chapter 1: Everything I Knew About Love as a Teenager.

I found Dolly Alderton’s ‘Everything I know about Love’ to be profoundly moving. It made me cry. Don’t be fooled by the title. This is no soppy chick lit novel. Much like Nancy Mitford titled her novel ‘The pursuit of Love’. This fabulous non-fiction read is an autobiographical account of the author’s early teens with the advent of MSN to her university years and beyond. This book has now been dramatised into a more fictionalised account as a series for the BBC. Dolly also has a wonderful podcast where she interviews celebrities about love.

This book navigates the the highs and lows of learning to love yourself as you grow in your late teens and twenties. It’s non-linear and mixes up incidents from different ages. It’s also punctuated by recipes and amusing lists such as ‘The most annoying things that people say’. One that I couldn’t agree with more is the line -‘I’m not going to have a starter, are you?’-

One of my favourite aspects of the book were the chapters that picked out what Dolly thought of Love at different ages. These chapters focussed on what Dolly thought about love at 17, 22, 25, 28 and 30. These chapters were short made up of short wise epigrams that all had something keenly witty to say. Reading these chapters in context with the repartee of Dolly’s experience’s in her twenties- It’s beautiful to observe Dolly’s understanding of Love develop from something that is purely romantic to a broader and fuller spectrum of Platonic and Agape. I would argue that Dolly probably values her Platonic relationships more strongly then anyone else I have ever read. Evidenced in her account of her lifelong love, her best friend Farly. I really admire her for this. I also admire her frankness in discussing her mental health issues and romantic struggles. I admire Dolly describing her journey to developing a stronger sense of self through stepping back from dating app culture and learning to love herself better. By focusing on feeling enough by herself living as a single, independent woman.

I have also watched the TV adaptation and there is a speech that is not in the book but spoken to the Dolly character by her mother in the car at the end of season 1, episode 7. For me, it sums up what I think the author was trying to understand in writing this book about what she imagines love means to her. I think it’s simply a beautiful reflection on the meaning of Love;

I think that you are looking for an extraordinary kind of love-but I think that for what it’s worth… that you don’t want to be loved in an extraordinary way. I think that what you want, is to be loved plainly and quietly- without spectacle… or anxiety… I know that for now it seems fun to set off all kinds of bombs in your own life…but one day- it’s hard to believe- but you won’t need to- because things will be dramatic enough. There will be sickness and breakdowns and bankruptcy and Cancer…. There will be so much fucking cancer, everywhere, everyday like a weather report… the world will feel like a war zone and you want the person you love to feel like PEACE. Someone who will listen to you and make you laugh. Do the crossword with you at breakfast.

Ok, I’m finished now. Go check out the song Goodbye England by Laura Marling at the end of the episode which was used to great effect. https://youtu.be/KernnVdPAI0

To conclude, I throughly enjoyed this book that I picked up at Shakespeare & Co., Paris on my own solo trip to Paris. My favourite quote from outside the shop is ‘The proprietor could be seen reading peacefully, indifferent to worldly success. Beside him lies a dog, or prehaps a cat.’ As someone who often needs to focus on worldly success for survival, I found the notion of how books can draw you away from this preoccupation very calming. I think that Dolly Alderton’s book will help you too, reader, to relax and reflect on what Love in all its forms means to you too.