Everything I Know About Love

Shoutout to Nick, who one day in January came to me and asked, “Do you know Dolly Alderton?” To which I replied, “Nah.”

…and about a week later, I found Everything I Know About Love on my bookshelf.

At first, I didn’t get it.

Was I reading a diary? Someone breaking the fourth wall and talking about their teenage recklessness, alcoholism, career, sex, relationships, friendships, and life in general? What exactly was I reading??

Unlike movies, which I Google obsessively before watching (and mid-watch), I do the opposite with books. I avoid reviews, hoping to curb subjective emotions and spoilers before I even start. So I went in blind. I thought it was fiction, and after almost quitting it, I remember being on Instagram stories like, “100+ pages later and I still can’t get into this book. Is it me?”

Until, until I saw the “Dolly Alderton Prize for Disorganisation,” and I was like… what? Wait, that’s the author’s name. What is it doing here? I couldn’t hold myself back from scouring the internet, and then I found out… I was reading someone’s freaking memoir!

I felt like I was splashed with cold water, then shocked back to life. I went from judging the literary presentation that was aching my head a while back to becoming invested in what was unfolding as I delicately turned the pages! It felt like a letter from a pen pal about who they are, where they are from, how they loved and were loved, how they messed up, how they survived. It became intimate.

Besides the occasional bits you see in movies or the teenage-year stories people sometimes drop into conversations, I’ve never really had this kind of front-row view. Like, you did what at 13?

My attention was rapt, and I smiled as I read about her experience using MSN and Facebook. While I didn’t fully experience MSN, I knew Facebook and ultimately 2go very well. Unlike her, I didn’t have a computer (until later) or internet at home; instead, I’d go to the cybercafés, buying time on the internet, which was insanely expensive. Then comes the hurdle of your friend replying while you’re online, so you don’t have to wait until another time.

Seeing that very specific teenage anxiety reflected back at me felt oddly comforting.

Then she shared her experiences about weight. Being a bit fat, being a bit thin, and the endless jokes people make, ultimately about how thinness becomes synonymous with deserving love and happiness.

And yunno, she’s right, if nothing, the media has shown that there’s no limit to being a “desirable” woman. Wax, nails, hair, lashes, bleach the dark bits. Be thin, but thinner. Have nice butts and tits, but not too much, so you can be taken seriously. Full lips, but not too full to distract. Unless you choose to make life about you, everyone will always tell you how to look; how to be more alluring!

I could go on about the things I found amusing, relatable, or enraging but then even if I managed to write it all, I fear you’d never get to the end of this review. So, I’ll close this with one of my favorite parts which was Dolly’s chat with Farly after losing Floss. She shared that imagining the lives the people we’ve lost would have lived is a fantasy that is more torturous than it is comforting.

Yunno, I needed that, because the very morning I read it, I had been thinking about my brother who would have been 24 in a month. I imagine the life he ought to be living, finished from uni? Masters? Working? Girlfriend? And she’s right. It didn’t give me any relief or joy; I was sullen all day, and went on to have a shitty couple of days because of it.

We experience grief differently, but certain truths hold true regardless of where we are from.

This book was a journey through the lives of people I didn’t know until now. (Of course, I’ve done a lot of googling into a lot of the people mentioned, I feel like a PI!). Also, it kinda gave a “Sex and the City” vibe, yunno the whole Carrie and her friends shennigans - party, drugs, smoking, the sometimes indiscriminate sex, career, the narrator (Dolly) being a writer like Carrie and all and all…

Also, I wondered if the book might have benefited from being titled, “Everything I Know About Friendship,” but I guess saying “…love” isn’t too far from the truth because, well, while not romantic love, she did have some really wholesome love from the women in her life.

Everything I Know About Love is a love story about a woman finding herself, loving and losing (friends, people, family), of growing, messing up remarkably and finding out the hard way, and, ultimately, of loving herself. This is perhaps one of the best love stories I have had the pleasure of reading.

When I started, I thought it would be romance fiction, I’m glad it isn’t. It’s wayyyyyyy waaaaayyyy better.

So what do I know about love from Dolly’s perspective? A lot and nothing.

There’s also something I learned from this book that’s haunting me. It’s haunting me so much it’s bleeding into my waking and sleeping hours. Nope, not sharing here.