Andy Dawson is a British stand-up comedian of middling success and, he is increasingly worried, of middling talent. Years removed from a Best Newcomer Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, he knows finds himself stuck to performing at second-tier comedy clubs and desperately looking for low-level corporate gigs while his contemporaries are making TV appearances and becoming famous.
That, however, is not what’s troubling Andy most as the story begins. He’s just been dumped by his girlfriend of the last four years. Andy was stunned when Jen told him they were through, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He bounces around from his mom’s house, to his best friends, to some really unsuitable rooms for rent. He goes crazy whenever he smells Jen’s perfume. He drinks in the middle of the day, until he reverses course and starts working out like crazy. He tries, and sometimes fails, to resist texting Jen.
There’s not much new in Andy’s post-breakup progression. He stalks Jen online, her runs into her and her new guy and sort of spirals, he worries that he’s going to be alone for the rest of his life, he sleeps with someone he probably shouldn’t, etc etc etc. Sometimes the details elevate the material, but mostly Alderton’s book is just a mildly pleasant story, to the point that it frankly becomes irritating how un-special this book really is. You see, I read this because the New York Times named it one of the ten best books of the year, and frankly, that is preposterous. Now, it’s not Dolly Alderton’s fault that the Times decided to massively overrate her book, but it still set expectations far too high.
Andy never really struck me as a credible comedian. Alderton doesn’t really dive into his material or presentation, so the reader is left with no idea what he’s like up on stage. It’s a weird omission, distancing the reader from the character. The only assumption to be made is that Alderton didn’t include any jokes because she couldn’t write them. I also felt, at times, that it was too obvious that Andy was a male character being written by a woman. I know men writing women tend to make more egregious mistakes, at least according to the internet, but the reverse can also be precarious. It’s subtle, but Andy’s behaviors and thought processes often didn’t ring true to life.
Late in the book, after many chapters from Andy’s perspective, Alderton flips the script and presents Jen’s version of events. Doing so provides helpful shading to the events of the book and even provides answers for some lingering mysteries, but it also has the unintended consequence of showing how much more comfortable, and believable, Alderton is when writing through a female perspective. Still, the ending of the novel is definitely a highlight, even if the timing of everything (being vague to avoid spoilers) left a real sour taste in my mouth.