“I’m definitely an over-sharer,” says author Dolly Alderton. “All I want to do is tell everyone everything. I connect with people through the details of life.” This won’t be a surprise to anyone who has listened to the writer’s podcast, The High Low, or has read her 2018 bestseller, Everything I Know About Love, in which she documents her first flat in London, her adventures in love and the female friendships that sustained her during that time.
It’s her vulnerability and the way she lays her own life on the page, no holds barred, that made the book such a hit. What is probably a surprise, though, is that Dolly is no longer writing about herself. “I would never write another memoir,” she says. “I’ve stopped being robust enough to write about my personal life. The older I get, the more aware I am that once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can’t put it back in.”
Her latest book, Good Material, is firmly fictional. It does, however, apply the same magnifying glass to personal relationships as her non-fiction. The novel follows heartbroken Andy as he navigates life without ex-girlfriend Jen – before we get to hear Jen’s side.
Writing fiction, Dolly says, has been the most challenging but enjoyable part of her career so far. It’s an ambition she’s had for a long time – as far back as her childhood, when she kept a diary and got in trouble for using up the paper in her mum’s printer to make magazines.
Dolly’s big break was a dating column in The Sunday Times, which came after a stint working as a story producer on reality show Made In Chelsea. She’s been back at The Sunday Times again since 2020, penning an agony aunt column for which she receives hundreds of letters a week. She recently added screenwriter to her many skills, adapting Everything I Know About Love into a seven-part drama for the BBC and is currently working on more TV.
Now 35, Dolly still keeps a diary and does her best thinking on paper, she says. In person, she is just as eloquent as in her writing: funny, smart and thoughtful. Born and brought up in Stanmore, north London, she still lives in the capital with her cat, Goldie.
I’ve always wanted to write a book about heartbreak. We’ve come so far as human beings but heartbreak is still something that can floor us. I wanted to explore why it’s so painful – how much of that pain we feel is about the absence of a person you love and how much of it is about rejection, abandonment? How much of it keys into of our feelings from childhoods and our animal instincts?
As research for the book I interviewed lots of men and the thing uniting every single conversation was that they didn’t know how to talk to their male best friends when they were heartbroken and vulnerable. They all said they felt like they had a limited amount of support before it felt like their dignity was compromised and their friends’ patience was tested. I just had to write about that. How do you get through those big emotional things when you don’t have this assembly of friends who believe it’s their job to hold your emotions and wipe your tears during that time?
I’m not really a man’s woman; I don’t fully understand men, and I never really have. I adore them and they send me nuts!
Writing my first novel Ghosts was daunting. I felt very self conscious as a writer. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those people who had loved my book [Everything I Know About Love], or really disliked my book; all those voices were in my head. The turning point was when I just accepted that there’s a chance that the first book I ever wrote, when I was 28, will be the biggest of my life. And that’s totally fine.
I have so many ambitions! One is to get really good at what I do. I want to try new things in fiction; I want to adapt something from a historical story, I want to write a romantic book about a man and a woman being happy which I’ve never done. There aren’t enough years left to do all the things that I want to do.
When writing is going well I feel like I’m in a room of other souls; I don’t feel alone. I feel connected to lots of ideas too. Writing is how I translate the experience of life to understand it. Even when I’m not writing for money I still need to get words down on paper.
I never follow my own advice! If you want to find someone with a complicated personal life where they’re making bad decisions all the time, look no further than a professional advice giver! If I need help I turn to my best female friends. ‘You’re just going to have to be brave’ is something my best friend India once said me in a moment in my life when I was feeling stuck and it’s now something I say that to myself a lot. So simple but the best advice always is.
I was quite a fearful kid and I don’t want that to be my personality as an adult. I don’t want to stop myself from having experiences. As I’ve got older I’ve had to really force myself to do things that feel a bit scary – getting into that microlight or jumping into the cold water – but I feel so good about myself when I do.
Bravery is a really inspiring quality. By which I mean having the courage to do something that feels unfamiliar or doing things that come with a risk. I’d love to be a brave woman. I’m a big people pleaser and that has led to some cowardly decisions in the past because I’m always so worried about people not liking me so I don’t live in a truthful way.
I’m very flattered that people would describe me as a voice of my generation but I would never assume that role. My experience, my outlook, the stories I choose to tell, I personally obviously think they’re interesting but people have heard from perspectives like mine before. There are lots of other voices we haven’t even heard from yet so I think it’s important we usher those stories into the public domain. I would never want to speak for large groups of people because I can’t.
Good Material by Dolly Alderton is out now
