Leyla Sanai

Looking for love: Ghosts, by Dolly Alderton

After parting from her boyfriend, thirtysomething Nina gives internet dating another go in this masterpiece of modern manners

Dolly Alderton. Credit: Getty Images 
issue 24 October 2020

Of all the successful modern female writers documenting their search for love, none has been as endearing as Dolly Alderton. Candace Bushnell’s alter ego Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City was too brash, perma-groomed and designer-clad. Liz Jones is vulnerable and self-effacingly funny, but her low self esteem and anorexia ring my ‘needs therapy’ alarm, and she too seems bizarrely materialistic.

Alderton, though, is the kind of woman every woman wants as a friend. Not only was her first book, the memoir Everything I Know About Love, unfiltered in its honesty about heartache, it was also a warm paean to friendship, with its eternal goldmine of emotional intelligence, conversations about everything, unconditional love and astute advice on tap.

Her second book is a novel, but is no less stuffed full of insights and adroit observations. Thirtysomething food writer Nina is fulfilled by work and friends but looking for love too.

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