She said she thinks about it all the time: Dolly Alderton's Good Material is not a rom-com

and I wonder why it is marketed as such

I have tried, and tried again, to write an analysis on Dolly Alderton’s Good Material. It’s what I try to achieve with this blog—my posts are usually not so much reviews, more articles of humble literary criticism. I try to look at books objectively, and I mean as objects, literary objects, little machines with mechanisms I understand through an academic lens. I usually succeed in detaching myself from the emotional experience of reading the book enough to provide this view. I don’t know if I succeed in conveying that detachment, or if I succeed in any semblance of objectivity (if there is any objectivity to be had—I myself am unsure of this).

With Dolly Alderton, I cannot bring myself to string together any words to that effect. I cannot see the object from a far enough distance: there’s always an emotional aspect tying me close, too close. I can look at Good Material and say,

Alderton takes a gamble with the first part of the book, as the focalisation on Andy and his pain after being broken up with by Jen narrows the narrative down. It’s only when—spoiler alert!—we get to the great reveal of Jen’s point of view that the book broadens wonderfully.

But I cannot move forward speaking of narrative devices and first-person narrators because a single image bursts forth, loud, impossible to ignore: Jen sitting on her and Andy’s couch, watching Joni Mitchell talking about her grandmother being so frustrated from her life that she kicked a door off its hinges, and breaking into tears.

Jen shares fundamental conversations with two older women: the first, with her dying grandmother, and the second with Andy’s mother. In plain terms and very few words, leaving some things unsaid and other painfully bare, they discuss some very hard, uncomfortable facts about the reality of womanhood and motherhood as societal roles; about what a woman must give up in order to become something other than herself—a wife and a mother. These words cut through Jen, and through me, like a knife.

“You have a home that is yours,” she said. “And your own money. Don’t you?”
“I have a bit of money, yes.”
“And you have your education. And you have your career.” I nodded. “Then you have everything,” she said. (313)

“I love my son,” she said. “And I don’t say this as his mum, I say it as a woman who’s got twenty-six years on you. Everything you want to do in your life, you can do without a man, Jen.”
“What about children?” I asked.
There was a long pause.
“I could never regret having my son. His existence in the world is the best thing I will leave in it when it’s my time to go.”
“I know,” I assured her.
Another long pause.
“But do I ever think about what my life would have been like had I been brave enough to not become a mother? Had I been brave enough to even imagine what that life could have been like?”
“Do you?” I asked, checking she was still on the line.
“I think about it all the time,” she said.
We said goodbye, knowing that was most likely the last time we would ever speak to each other. (326)

She says “Brave enough.” The book does not paint motherhood in a single stroke—this is not an anti-motherhood manifesto. One of Jen’s closest friends, Jane, is very happy with her growing family, as is Jen’s sister with hers—sacrifices and all. But Andy’s mother thinks about it—that other life she would have had if she’d not become a mother, the other life she can never experience—she thinks about it all the time.

This great chorus of different women is what stayed the most with me—sorry, Andy. Jen’s grandmother, Joni Mitchell, her grandmothers, Andy’s mother, Jane. The door kicked off its hinges, “Then you have everything,” “Brave enough,” I think about it all the time.

So why is the book marketed as a romantic comedy? This is even reinforced by the North American cover of the book, which unlike the original UK cover shows two shirts hung to dry outside a window mimicking a hand-hold pose. The disservice is done to both the book and the readers. I imagine the effect may be similar to the large swathes of readers put off from reading the Neapolitan Quartet because of the original covers. But I hope this book finds its audience, beyond the already great popularity of Dolly Alderton. I think this is the right time for these uncomfortable questions. I think we might be ready.