Good Material

LoveReading Says

Alderton cements herself a little further in my must-read author list with every new book. She seemingly can do it all. Her award-winning memoir Everything I Know About Love was a triumph, her debut fiction Ghosts was a LoveReading Star Book, and now we are presented with the inexorable Good Material, her second novel, this time narrated by a male protagonist, and it's another absolute corker.

Meet Andy, a 35-year old balding, failed comedian with no savings who lodges with a 78-year-old tinned food collector. Jen is the woman he’s loved for three years, 10 months and 29 days who dumped him and smashed his heart like a Piñata.

As we flashback to happier times we are plunged into a revelatory journey of pain, of heartbreak and of self-discovery as Andy miserably tries to find his way through the grief, through the breakup, find his way forward. Heal. Heartbroken. 

Single at 35, as he wonders: "How can I have let myself believe, even for a second, that single thirty-something life would be an endless buffet of opportunities, when I know it is at best, small plates."

And so Alderton talks about lives in your 30s so perfectly pitched, so observationally spot on. The Sunday Times Agony Aunt and award-winning novelist uses her power, her knowledge, her material so brilliantly. And I couldn't put it down. From chuckle to howl and everything in between. I belly laughed my way through.

Yet again Alderton delivers a fresh, funny, relatable read that is so recognisable, so real. I bloody love her. She comments in the book: "This is why comedians make the best drinking companions. They will never have enough validation, enough success, enough love, enough good stories, enough material. And I wonder if this is what being an observational author like Alderton is like. Scribbling, magpie-ing material. Who cares? Just don't stop. I can't wait for the next one.

Deborah Maclaren

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