Monday 19 March 2018

Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton

Alderton is a journalist and podcaster, here she talks about her teenage years and her twenties; the ideas she had about love at various points in her life and the situations that changed or augmented those ideas. She questions the way we see ourselves and how that is shaped by the world and popular culture and how self acceptance affects the way you can function. Alderton has warmth and an exuberant and pictoral way of writing which means the book doesn't at all feel like navel gazing, but honest discussion.

Everything I know about love is heartbreaking, joyful and hopeful. The undying love in the book is between Alderton and her close girlfriends, and the book points out a lack of importance shown to friendship in society, she makes a case for being as proud of an ability to keep an intimate and long lasting friendship as for a long lasting partnership or marriage. A warm, entertaining and nourishing read.