Ghosts

June 1, 2021
A 32-year-old single woman in London copes with disappearances: Her married friends have been swallowed up by reproduction, her father is succumbing to dementia, and she's about to see what kinds of guys are on dating apps. Nina Dean is just returning to the fray of dating after a period of conscious singlehood following a long-term relationship. She's never been on a dating app and has never heard of "ghosting." Her only remaining single friend, a colorful character named Lola who's quite desperate to settle down, has to explain: " 'Number of schools of thought, ' she said, with the command of an academic. 'Most commonly, it is thought to have come from the idea that you are haunted by someone who vanishes, you don't get any closure.' " The dread the reader feels for Nina upon reading this is borne out in spades by the pessimistic plot of this nonetheless amusing novel. A popular columnist and podcaster in Britain, Alderton tackles many of the same themes in her fiction debut that she addressed in her essay collection, Everything I Know About Love (2018). At the end of the day, the author's strengths are more those of an essayist than a novelist. Nina is a bit of an odd character--a food writer who doesn't seem to care much about food or writing--and the plot is fairly predictable except for a ferocious sex scene that seems to have fallen into this book from some other novel. These failings are outweighed by Alderton's funny formulations and essayistic insights: "Being a heterosexual woman who loved men meant being a translator for their emotions, a palliative nurse for their pride and a hostage negotiator for their egos." "I'd noticed this was a thing that people did when they got into their thirties: they saw every personal decision you made as a direct judgement on their life." Yes! Yes! Yes! (This is the sound of Alderton's millennial demographic, reading her book.)

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June 14, 2021
The sprightly, sometimes touching debut novel by British memoirist Alderton (Everything I Know About Love) follows a cookbook author through her life’s “strangest year.” Nina, 32, has bought a flat in London and is taking a break from men after amicably breaking up with her first boyfriend, Joe, who has since gotten engaged and with whom she remains friends. Now, with most of her friends married, having kids, and moving to the suburbs, she hits a dating app in search of love. She promptly meets Max, a 37-year-old surfer, “his eyes shining, his beard golden brown, his skin burnished from sunbeams.” Things between them go swimmingly for months before he ghosts her, leaving her to cope with heartbreak, her beloved father’s advancing dementia, her increasing estrangement from her friends, and her unnerving downstairs neighbor. Alderton doesn’t exactly cover new ground as she moves through the obligatory scenes: an awkward weekend with Joe’s fiancée and her friends, an uncomfortable wedding, difficult conversations with Nina’s parents, and frustrating get-togethers with old friends. Still, this should hit the spot for readers of women’s fiction who appreciate the familiar.

July 1, 2021
Alderton's fiction debut delivers a refreshing and clever meditation on a single British woman's late coming-of-age. Thirtysomething Nina Dean, a food writer, joins the dating app Linx under the guidance of Lola, her terminally single but hilarious friend with a self-anointed "PhD in dating." When Nina matches with Max, they hit it off immediately and begin a whirlwind romance. After three blissful months, he professes his love to Nina but then falls off the face of the earth, ghosting her. Readers become coconspirators with Nina as she wryly parses modern dating and the very real, psychologically damaging phenomenon that is ghosting. Did she imagine the heartfelt "I love you"? The whole relationship? It would be a mistake to pigeonhole Ghosts as just a novel about dating, since Alderton thoughtfully explores the ever-present uncertainty haunting adulthood, including aging parents, changing friendships, and contemplating children and myriad "paths that lie ahead." Full of quirky characters, sardonic commentary, and millennial ruminations, Ghosts is for fans of the show Fleabag, Sally Rooney's Normal People (2020), and Lily King's Writers & Lovers (2021).

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