Review: Everything I know about Love, Dolly Alderton

@debbie.little.bookshelf

Dolly Alderton writes as if she has all of our souls, experiences, secrets, fears, and ambitions in a huge pot. To which she adds a generous amount of witty humour, a lot of love, and the most beautiful, unique, never stop turning the pages until you eyes are sore - but still even after that - prose, which is then poured carefully into this love story about friendship, life, and platonic love.

Although I started reading this a long while ago, I simply couldn’t get into it at the time. I was reminded of a viewpoint Luc Van Donkersgoed suggested, “think not of the books you’ve bought as a ‘to be read’ pile. Instead, think of your bookcase as a wine cellar. You collect books to read at the right time, the right place, and the right mood” and boy was this all of those things for me. I needed it.

At the time I read this book, I had recently went through a breakup that truly annihilated me. Turns out, a separation from someone I genuinely thought I was going to be with for the rest of my life, who I put my everything into, who I loved more than myself, intertwined with the feeling it gave me of not being good enough… is really quite rubbish. But it’s times like that, when all is said and done, that we learn who is really there.

Friends - and I am lucky enough to have the best of them all. To my intelligent, beautiful, gorgeous, spectacular, amazing, patient friends - how Dolly writes about her girls, is how I feel about you. I love you, with all my heart. For all the times you’ve just been there, piecing together fragments of a heart that you didn’t break and carefully super gluing it back together with warm mugs of hot chocolate, laughter, tears, messy nights out, cosy nights in, deep chats on late night drives, chats about the silliest of things, giving me advice and not punching me in the face when I do the opposite, holding me whilst I cried myself to sleep, coming out with me just to watch me dance, telling me when I’m wrong, and helping me heal. Thank you for always reminding me that I deserve someone who thinks I’m too important to lose.

Dolly's recollection of living with her girls mad me feel so warm and happy sad that I got to experience that at me time at university. Showering whilst someone was weeing or brushing their teeth, popping my head around the shower curtain because only a facial expression could appropriately react to the gossip. Cooking mac and cheese. Drinking wine eating said mac and cheese. Watching Dirty Dancing and every single Twilight. Making flapjacks and all digging into the freshly backed tray with little spoons and melted Nutella. Acting feral in Bodega Nottingham and being in hysterics when the bouncer gave us nicknames. Peaking out of the upstairs window when one of us was on a first date with a cute boy, enduring the deathly silence that fell in the living room when said cute boy walked down the stairs in the morning and put on his shoes, swiftly followed by screams and giggles when the front door shut after him, the stress of uni work, a million bowls of pasta, and a million memories. Which eventually led to the sad, fast, and staggered goodbyes when leaving our little final year home behind and officially moving on.

Everything I know about love really makes you feel grateful and as if you are right where you are supposed to be. I can go to sleep a little bit lighter tonight because everything Dolly knows about love, I know too.