REVIEW: As someone whose taste in books is best described as “literature you could give to an alien to educate them on the beautiful and convoluted nature of human relationships,” Good Material well and truly ticked the box for me.
Dolly Alderton’s latest follows Andy, a 30-year-old stand up comedian stumbling his way through a devastating break up. Described by his ex, Jen, as an “intimacy junkie,” Andy no longer knows who he is outside of his relationship, and oscillating between loving and hating Jen (and himself), he scrambles to feel like a person again.
If you’ve ever felt that a breakup has caused you to lose every single marble you once thought you were in possession of, this book is a warm reminder that you’re actually supposed to feel that way – and you will make it through to the other side.
The strength of Good Material lies in the way Dolly switches perspectives between different characters throughout the book, indulging us in the Zillenial fantasy of being able to dance between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. If you are someone who watches your own Instagram story a minimum of 13 times and stalks your own profile to “imagine how other people are seeing you,” you are the target audience.
As we get to know Andy by spending time inside his head, we also get to see how other characters perceive his actions and his behaviours, offering us a satisfying opportunity to see his personality refracted through multiple lenses, and in a way, assess how we might be being perceived ourselves.
I think it is deeply relatable that Andy is so fearful of what people think of him, going to extreme lengths to avoid coming across as neurotic, overly-nostalgic, and embarrassing in some situations, but then being completely oblivious to how he comes across as neurotic, overly-nostalgic and embarrassing in other ways. Just like in our own realities, we can be so self-aware while obsessing over all the wrong things.
Dolly’s choice to write from a man’s perspective as an author so entrenched in writing about women’s friendships was a bold one that paid off. By offering a male perspective, she gives her core audience a piece of the puzzle they find so deeply fascinating – to know what their breakups were like for their boyfriends. Allowing women to push their noses up against the glass and try to see into their exes’ brains is such a clever strategy and makes for a refreshing read.
On a personal level, it made me feel grateful for the support system of women I have in my life. In the novel, Andy mourns that his mates don’t quite have the right scripts to follow to comfort him through his mental breakdown. He is jealous of the way Jen and her friends talk about their feelings at length by “each taking turns to present an emotion they’ve felt and all of them putting it under the microscope for inspection, as if it were a gem with a billion faces”.
It is upsetting to think how many gems may have been buried because of friends who didn’t know how to show up for one another for fear of seeming “cringe” or “overly-feminine”.
This is where Good Material does a fantastic job at addressing a few of the Choose Your Own Adventure stories that are available for men after a breakup when they’re feeling lost in life. They could go down the Gym Bro Disordered Eating path, or they could choose to pursue a series of shallow situationships à la Fuckboy (lest they accidentally give themselves the opportunity of processing an emotion). At worst, they could even slide down the Harry-Styles-In-Don’t-Worry-Darling-Himcel-Slope.
There are of course other, better paths, like reaching out to your friends and family or even using your breakup experience to create art, but this novel reminds us that even when you are an emotional, social, caring person like Andy, it can often be hard for men to carve out space to grieve and talk candidly about their breakups if they don’t really know how to comfort each other.
[Small spoiler: By the end of the novel, he decides that stoically showing up for drinks at the pub isn’t going to cut it, and accepts the gift that this breakup has given him: the ability to comfort others. It is this kind of growth that cements Andy firmly away from the ‘insufferable man-child’ category and shows the positive step I think a lot of men are taking by broaching the topic of mental health with their friends.]
To summarise how skilfully this book was written, GoodReads user Paige Pierce’s comment says it all: “Dolly manages to take the reader through the mania, the bargaining, and the desperation of searching for control in a situation that you did not choose to be in, and she does it without making us hate the woman who has caused the breakup.”
This story thoughtfully portrays the characters not as “bad guys,” or “good guys,” but as two halves to the same coin. Crafting the characters to be flawed, messy, and complicated in a way that draws you in and makes you feel seen and understood is where this novel shines.
Ultimately, Good Material, in all its Angus, Thongs & Perfect Snogging For Adults glory, is a fantastic read. I can’t recommend it enough if you want a book that reminds you that, as our lord and saviour, Zoë Foster Blake says, “it’s called a breakup because it was broken.”
Reading this was a comforting reminder that going through these ups and downs is an integral part of the human experience – so I am sure the alien anthropologists would approve of it, too.
Good Material by Dolly Alderton, $37
