By Dolly Alderton
Memoir of friendship, love, and growing up
Subject
Themes
A young woman grows up in the beige suburbs of North London, obsessed with boys she has never met and a best friend she will love for the rest of her life. From the age of eleven, when Farly sits next to her in a maths lesson, the two become inseparable. They spend their adolescence watching Nickelodeon reruns, chatting to Phantom Boys on MSN Messenger, and dreaming of adulthood. The narrator, tall, chaotic, and desperate to be taken seriously, treats alcohol as her small act of independence; Farly, short, methodical, and deeply loyal, provides the ballast.
A young woman grows up in the beige suburbs of North London, obsessed with boys she has never met and a best friend she will love for the rest of her life. From the age of eleven, when Farly sits next to her in a maths lesson, the two become inseparable. They spend their adolescence watching…
Published in 2018, Everything I Know About Love arrives at a moment when the millennial memoir is establishing itself as a significant literary form. Alongside writers such as Nora Ephron, whose essay collections blend humour with emotional candour, and Caitlin Moran, whose How to Be a Woman helped…
The central relationship is not a romance but a friendship. From the moment Farly squeezes Dolly's hand twice under a desk during a humiliating geography lesson, the two are bound by a silent Morse code that means "I'm here, I love you." Their bond weathers two decades of change: the beige suburbs,…
A recurring pattern runs through every romantic encounter: the mistaking of intensity for intimacy. From MSN Messenger to Tinder, from midnight minicabs to moonlit streets, each new connection follows the same trajectory. An explosive beginning, an all-consuming exchange, and then the crushing…
The search for identity runs beneath every essay like an underground river. A teenager in Stanmore constructs herself through borrowed materials: AOL dial-up, MSN Messenger, email addresses labelled BOYS, a dog-eared copy of The Female Eunuch carried more as a prop than a text. She performs…
Florence Kleiner dies at nineteen, having spent less than a year battling leukaemia. She is not a minor figure in this story. She is creative, passionate, furious with life, writing film blogs, directing school plays, giving talks on LGBT issues, and shouting "MISOGYNIST!" at family dinners. Her…
The body is never neutral. From the age of fourteen, when the narrator is shopping for size 16s and not yet sixteen, physical appearance is entangled with self-worth, romantic desirability, and the desperate wish to be taken seriously. She comes from a long, tall line of giants. Her brother is six…
Growing up in Stanmore, on the outermost fringe of the Jubilee line, a teenage girl discovers that the suburbs are a vacuum for identity. There is no art, no culture, no independent shops; only golf clubs, branches of Prezzo, and driveways. Her salvation arrives in the form of AOL dial-up internet.…
The first taste of alcohol arrives at ten years old, at a bat mitzvah in Mill Hill where prepubescent girls in Tammy Girl dresses are served glass after glass of champagne by catering staff. A wave of warmth floods through the body, joints loosen like just-proved dough, and an irresistible…
At twenty-one, the phone call arrives: Harry, her first proper boyfriend, tells her he no longer loves or fancies her. Farly drives to collect her at one a.m., yells at Harry on the phone, then stays for a fortnight. The heartbreak triggers something unexpected: the inability to eat. Within two…
The crumbling yellow-brick maisonette in Camden, found on Gumtree from a BBC-presenter landlord called Gordon, becomes the first real home. During the viewing, Gordon hastily scoops up a black box labelled "RAT ATTACK!" from the cupboard. The house is damp, eccentric, and fundamentally broken, but…
The Rod Stewart-themed Christmas party is a masterclass in catastrophe. Dolly bankrupts herself on memorabilia: plastic cups with his face, customised mince pies, a life-size cardboard cut-out, and a banner reading "MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABY!!" The first guests arrive already drunk, with a Cavalier King…
A satirical Christmas round-robin letter from the fictional Andrea captures the quiet desperation of single twenty-something life. She has been promoted at an organic juice start-up called Pressed For Lime to Social Media Campaigns Overseer, which means posting videos of fruit with faces drawn on…
At twenty-seven, riddled with anxiety and unable to open windows for fear of falling out, Dolly starts seeing a therapist named Eleanor in a small room behind Oxford Circus. Eleanor, an Australian with toned arms and a Lauren Hutton face, delivers the diagnosis in the first session: "You've got no…
After David's departure, a loud, defensive declaration of celibacy lasts just shy of three months before the disastrous Christmas Special: a Geordie from a dating app arrives at two a.m. with organic red wine, and the perfunctory sex feels like a rushed sandwich in a motorway service station. She…
At twenty-eight, the beliefs about love have matured into something kinder, more grounded, and infinitely more generous than the teenage declarations that opened this journey. Any decent man would take a woman at peace with herself over one who performs tricks to impress him. If a man needs to be…
By Dolly Alderton
Subject
Themes
A young woman grows up in the beige suburbs of North London, obsessed with boys she has never met and a best friend she will love for the rest of her life. From the age of eleven, when Farly sits next to her in a maths lesson, the two become inseparable. They spend their adolescence watching Nickelodeon reruns, chatting to Phantom Boys on MSN Messenger, and dreaming of adulthood. The narrator, tall, chaotic, and desperate to be taken seriously, treats alcohol as her small act of independence; Farly, short, methodical, and deeply loyal, provides the ballast.