Andy Dawson and Jen Bennett are a seemingly devoted couple in their mid-30s. He’s an affable C-list standup comedian; she’s a high-flying corporate type. They have been together for four years when, after a minibreak to Paris, apropos of nothing – at least as far as Andy is concerned – Jen announces that they need to part ways. With distinct notes of Helen Fielding, Richard Curtis and Nick Hornby, Dolly Alderton’s warm and generous second novel follows Andy’s subsequent tailspin.
This anatomisation of a breakup and its aftermath is daring, not, as one might expect, for Alderton’s decision to channel a male voice for the bulk of the text. The challenge here is the sustained smallness of the canvas she adopts: the intensely limited focus on Andy and his bungled attempts to understand the unexpected shaking of his world, to crawl out of his misery and to get his girl back.
The opening section is dominated by Andy’s messy, mournful boozing and pitiful Insta-stalking of his ex – and, later, her dashing new beau. There are consolatory catchups with mates who seem incapable of offering meaningful emotional support as Andy’s outlook gets bleaker. In the interests of self-improvement, he embarks on a gruelling health kick overseen by a hilariously tone-deaf, pumped-up personal trainer. The narrowness of scale could risk feeling repetitive or leaden, but Alderton captures the myopia and obsessiveness that sudden heartbreak can bring, using both satire and compassion. This generates empathy for self-deprecating Andy as he stumbles from one misadventure to the next: an empathy that is usefully complicated and tested when, towards the end of the novel, Jen is finally given the mic.
As with its predecessor, Ghosts, the broader milieu is a metropolitan, millennial, heterosexual one. Again, Alderton proves a sound and detailed observer of that world. In the kitchen of Andy’s post-Jen love interest, he notices “a half-empty uncorked bottle of red wine, relegated to ‘cooking wine’ that will never be used”; Andy has a penchant for watching shows called “Help, I’m a Hoarder!”. Notably, it’s a world riven by the schism between characters who have children and those who are child-free, and, in their different ways, both Andy and Jen navigate that social minefield with surprising grace and openness.
Their demographic is challenged by significant generational conflicts, too – boomer and gen Z characters repeatedly question Andy’s received wisdoms about love and relationships. When Andy retreats to the reassuring regularity of his suburban childhood home, the conversations he has with his mother about accepting rejection prove vital in reframing his self-awareness and vision of what his future might look like.
There’s much to enjoy here, not least Alderton’s willingness to allow in some narrative ambivalence: while Andy’s sorrow is humanely sketched, it also often leans towards self-indulgence. She’s got a good ear for dialogue – the banter between Andy and his mates is quick, crisp, familiar; full of convincing in-jokes about receding hairlines and geeky analyses of the Killers’ Mr Brightside. Alderton has a solid line in cameos, too: Emery, Andy’s markedly more successful standup friend, brings a wonderfully farcical energy to proceedings. Morris, Andy’s wilfully eccentric landlord, deserves a sitcom all of his own.
Good Material may not rewrite ideas about contemporary sexual politics, nor offer new insights into the minefield of mid-30s dating, and more space for Jen’s fascinatingly anguished storyline might have provided a piquant counterpoint to the novel’s bouncy and very British comic sensibility. But the overriding impression it leaves is one of a writer comfortably settling into her groove, and very much in control of her material.
• Good Material by Dolly Alderton is published by Fig Tree (£18.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
