Book Review: Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
*Content warnings* Includes discussion of dementia
Rating: 5/5
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Plot
Nina is a 32-year-old successful food writer living in London. She is an independent and seemingly well-off woman in her own right. We find out towards the beginning of the book that Nina was once in a seven-year-long relationship with Joe, who she now continues to have a close friendship with. Joe has since moved on to a new relationship with a woman named Lucy.
Nina begins to use the dating app ‘Linx’ (it’s Tinder.) and she hits it off with a ruggedly handsome man named Max. Nina and Max begin an intense partnership which culminates in Max telling Nina that he sees a future with her and that he loves her. However, as we might predict, Nina’s super-intense beau turns out to be not all that he seems.
The other theme in the plot surrounds Nina’s dad Bill, who is suffering from dementia. Nina’s mother Nancy (whose attempt to try to change her name to ‘Mandy’ throughout the course of the book adds some funny moments) finds becoming a carer for Bill increasingly difficult, as it forces her to accept her age and own mortality. Bill’s dementia leads him to a regression into childhood where he is essentially haunted by the memory of his mother, who he asks to see more and more as the book goes on.
First Impressions
As the title of the book might suggest, this novel examines in detail the act of ghosting and the impact that being ghosted has on your psyche. It’s quite clear that this is a book written by someone who has actually experienced ghosting, and I feel that readers will find many of the characters in this book extremely relatable. If you are already a fan of Dolly’s, you may be aware of her account of tracking down a man who ghosted her, who then agreed to meet for (an awkward) brunch to explain himself.
‘Ghosts’ is jam-packed with delicious phrasing and imagery, which will be of no surprise to you if you are already familiar with Dolly’s writing style and her memoir ‘Everything I Know About Love’.
Characters
I felt that the character descriptions in this book were very thorough and well-rounded. The main character Nina has a clear voice and motivations. Nina is the type of person you’d want as a friend, and the way she shows up for the people that she cares about in her life is commendable. You get the feeling that she is a self-assured and successful woman who doesn’t feel defined by her romantic relationships. At no point do you consider Nina to be a pathetic, lonely, woman who just wants to be loved; this makes it all the more devastating when Nina is treated unreasonably.
I loved Dolly’s description of Nina’s ‘Only Single Friend Lola’. Lola is Nina’s best friend, companion, and ally through the wilderness of online dating. Lola is a veteran of the apps and is described as a sweet, joyful, social butterfly that seems to have a magnetic personality, but alas, she is unlucky in love. Lola’s outlook on men and dating give a lot of comic relief to the book. I especially enjoyed a moment in the story where Lola is in a sense digitally haunted over WhatsApp by the man that she is dating, with her giving in to some fundamentally quite masochistic behaviour that many of us can identify with. Lola explains to Nina that the man she is seeing is always online, which means that he must be talking to other women for hours at a time: ‘I basically just sit there with our chat window open on my phone not talking to him but watching him be online. I cancelled dinner with a friend last night to do it.’
Katherine is Nina’s old best friend from school. Katherine is married with a child and is pregnant with her second for the majority of the book. Of course, what’s a book about a single woman in her 30s without the inevitable ‘marrieds vs singles’ trope? Yes, the theme is touched on, but Dolly manages to tackle this in a way that doesn’t feel tired, cliché, or too Bridget Jones-ey!
Nina and Katherine find themselves in a kind of ‘friendship of duty’ the more that their lives diverge. They both love and care for one another but, due to how different their lives have become Nina can ‘count at least three elephants now omnipresent in the room of our friendship from my side, and I’m sure Katherine could count at least three more of her own.’ Nina describes how she feels after visiting Katherine as giving her a sense of relief much like after she cleans her fridge or fills in a tax return, and has a strong suspicion that Katherine also feels the same way.
Read If:
You’re a fan of ‘chick lit’ that delves into deeper themes. You will like this novel if you enjoy books that discuss in depth the nuts and bolts of different types of relationships as we get into our early 30s; this includes romantic relationships, friendships, and families.
Made Me Think:
I feel that this book is largely about honesty and responsibility in dating. It discusses the idea that the power dynamic between heterosexual men and women changes when we reach our 30s. Nina confronts the man who ghosts her friend with a perfect speech that has stayed with me ever since I finished the book:
‘You know, every time you “change your mind” in such an extreme way, it takes something from a woman. It’s an act of theft. It’s not just a theft of her trust, it’s a theft of her time. You’ve taken things from her, so you could have a fun few months. Can you not see how selfish that is?’
I think that this demonstrates quite succinctly how leading a woman on in her 30s, especially a woman that has decided that she does want to get married and have children, is unethical.
The book also touches on how dating apps have made it too easy for people to spout intense platitudes and declarations of love on a whim and then run from them as easily as they were expressed. With apps like Tinder it is so easy to forget that there is a real person behind the pictures; real thoughts, feelings, and dreams. You can unmatch or delete someone off an app, but they will still exist in the real world.
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Written by: Hannah Leigh Vooght
Twitter: @hannahleighibd[1]
