Book Review: "Ghosts" by Dolly Alderton

Picking up cheap books should be considered a hobby because I found this one. A book I didn't think I'd like judging by the cover - it looked too much like what is usually dubbed as 'chick-lit'. But I know who Dolly Alderton is and I held my breath, hoping that perhaps she would not be as dull and droning as Bridget Jones's Diary. I was pleasantly surprised by Ghosts and eventually, I sort of came around to the idea of maybe reading some more of her books in the future. I'm just waiting for them to come down in price before I do. Let's take a look at the book then...

Nina Dean is a controversial character in the sense that she is both highly relatable and unlikeable in several ways. I like the way Dolly Alderton writes her flaws to be sort of universal so every time you find yourself disliking her you say to yourself quietly 'oh my god, am I like that too?' And then you laugh at it. Well, she's in her 30s and that means all of her friends are having children and thus, have less time for hanging out. As she turns 32, she definitely notices the drifting apart of her and her friendship group.

But then, she signs up for a dating app and finds a man called Max - it just so happens that they have the same birthday, as she found out after a drunken dance date. Dolly Alderton's ability to create supporting characters via information we learn about them rather than just lengthy and rather jittery descriptions makes everything feel smoother. You just get completely lost in all of Nina's escapades. But when Max says that he can see himself marrying her, Nina completely believes it.

Atop of this, her ex-boyfriend is engaged too and that, apart from 'forgetting what Max looked like' kind of makes her upset as she herself isn't really fitting into any traditional timeline. Her friend, Katherine, has an increasingly domestic life and of course, Nina doesn't want to be the friend that gets left behind in life. The idea that she still centres her friends who have decentralised her is quite upsetting but then again, I have never really centred a friend so I'm more like Katherine if anything (sorry). I can understand that people grow up and move on, that's just a fact of life, but I also think that Nina should seek out how to be happy alone rather than focusing on her loneliness. It's something I said whilst reviewing the book The Cure for Loneliness. People need to learn how to be happy alone.

We see the decline of Nina's father who is suffering horribly. When Nina returns home for lunch, her mother goes out leaving Nina with her father who is sinking further into cognitive decline. When Nina goes upstairs for just a second after offering to make her father lunch, she hears the alarm. He has placed his copy of the newspaper into the toaster in an attempt to make toast, but can't remember what he's doing there. It's quite an upsetting scene for a book that is supposed to be funny and satirical. It definitely shows Dolly Alderton's capability to write in many different emotions reflecting the different aspects of the ageing child of parents who are declining. Watching your parents decline is probably one of the most horrifying experiences of anyone who is getting older. It is so universal, yet so misunderstood.

Well, Max disappears eventually - just 'ghosting' her. I can't lie, I had to look up what 'ghosting' entailed to fully understand what was going on. I could kind of figure it out but I was wondering more whether there were specifics to 'ghosting' that were only for relationships. There is somewhat of a psychological rupture that happens here, as if someone has ripped her soul like a pair of millennial distressed skinny jeans. She feels shame, anger and many more emotions - it looks like the five stages of grief but I'm not going to lie, it doesn't seem as serious as watching your parents' cognitive decline and mental faculties go to shit.

There isn't a stereotypical 'beautiful ending' to this book but the main character goes through more observations that make her re-evaluate how central she needs to be in the lives of others, perhaps she can be a supporting person, but the key word is 'supporting'. Emotional carelessness litters the novel and it becomes easy to for Nina to become bitter and resentful. The key is trying to resist it for the sake of the people who are already in her life and need her help. She therefore needs to think about who she wants to be. Every 'bad' thing that happens to Nina is temporary and yet, it taught me that these temporary and emotional things can have a real impact on someone's mentality - even if I think they sound silly. It was eye-opening and written with such great wit, I couldn't tear myself away.