What a hilarious, universal book (timely, too!) that deserves its spots on the NYT Best of 2024 list that I found it on. Turns out the only thing I needed to care about the inner musings of an emotionally circumscribed mid-30s mid dude was to have him be written by a mid-30s woman!
This book reads like a fond, “hold my drink for a moment” cover of High Fidelity, with our main narrator Andy opening the book in the immediate aftermath of a breakup. After four and a half-ish years, Jen decided to end things, seemingly out of nowhere, after a trip to Paris, and Andy is rather out of sorts as he tries to handle it. He’s drinking himself to oblivion, rounding up the guy gang (once the WhatsApp poll gets enough replies, cutting out carbs en route to a revenge bod, compiling lists of ‘Why Jen was the Worst’ and ‘What I did to lose Jen,’ and studiously not not stalking her various social media profiles. In short, he’s any of us after being broken up with, even (especially when?) the relationship that preceded it wasn’t always sunshine and daisies.
Although hopefully he’s like, the combination of all of us, because there isn’t a trope that Andy doesn’t fall into and it’s…a lot.
This might seem like a depression book but I am here to tell you that it genuinely made me laugh out loud multiple times. It might then seem like the book is one extended punch down on Andy, a 35-year old aspiring comedian, and by extension be one of those Men Suck type screeds, but I am here to tell you it is also not that. Sometimes it is not not that, but Alderton infuses her work with such love and care for Andy that you can tell her wry observations are built from a lifetime of living with, befriending, and loving men of the 21st century.
As we all know, eventually Andy does recover. Are there relapses along the way? Of course. Are some of his coping mechanisms not the best? Of course. But does he come out the other end wiser, better, healthier, etc? Hopefully! Life changes cannot be affected overnight, they’re the result of small changes made incrementally over time, but you can see those parts of Andy coming out as he wrestles with one demon after the other as he seeks to answer the quintessential question: why did they break up with me?
This book would have been great (and maybe even a bit more “Haute Literature”) without the coda, which follows Jen before, during, and after the same time period we just spent with Andy. A vast majority of cisgender women who have/do date men will find what she writes unsurprising in the extreme, but there’s something to be said for the validation you get by having this section. Jen was right. Andy is right. Because…there are no villains, just two flawed people trying to do better.