By Giorgia Caso
Dolly Alderton knew what she was doing when she came out with Everything I Know About Love back in 2018. With a conversational tone, Dolly tells the reader about her life since she was a teenager to her early thirties, when she wrote the last chapter.
Certain readers can consider autobiographies boring which is why, most of the time, they are not for everyone. And yet, I think this novel suits every kind of reader. Dolly describes themes that touch our lives deeply but also subtly.
Love and friendship are the main themes, as the title suggests, but there is much more than just that (Read our next article if you would like to know more about those themes). Family is another feature of the novel that has a crucial importance. Dolly has had, as most teenagers have, a difficult relationship with her parents when she was young. She has always been rather rebellious and, even her best friend Farly, did not always agree with her actions. Her parents have always supported her in her aspirations and dreams but she drifted away from them at one point in her life. She then went back home after a while and realised her parents' value and importance.
The book follows Dolly’s life as she goes through phases or important moments such as her first love, or what she thought was love. Then when she goes to university in London, her first job and growing into an adult. She also tells the reader about the reality that is life and having to deal with grief, during times like when she had to face the death of Farly’s sister, Floss.
Dolly began her career by writing for Made In Chelsea and she leads us through her finding this job right when everything was starting to make sense. Also, the way she ends up working for that show is so casual and random that makes the reader think that maybe fate exists after all. In fact, fate is another theme that while taking a step back makes us see life as if we were spectators. As she writes this book later on, she describes events with hindsight. She confesses that some things she says might not have happened exactly like that but in a similar way, in a muchness of how recollections don't always completely portray an accuracy of events.
The novel mainly focuses on her twenties and she gives this powerful message that feeling lost at that age is completely normal and, most of the time, we do not know what we are doing. These are our years of fun, trying new things (not that we cannot do it later on or earlier) and being able to travel and see the world with fewer restrictions.
This book shows that whilst her story is interesting, it is also rather normal and common. She is not pretentious and uses simple language which makes her honest and genuine. At times, the novel may appear as an easy read simply because Dolly often inserts bullet lists, such as the list of things she was scared of. They might often appear random and meaningless but they complete the narrative and make it more real and vivid. She also inserts emails, that are like letters to an unknown audience, but they could be proof of her attempts to grow an audience since she was young. Texts are another interesting addition to the traditional narrative.
Personal growth is another theme that is subtler than the others, but it is still important as the novel follows Dolly from when she was a young girl to becoming a fully grown woman. Her thoughts are exposed and revealed and Dolly herself realises that she becomes a better person by the end of the book. The many answers she had when she was a teenager are still unanswered but she accepts that maybe she is never going to find them.
Her writing style is particular: sometimes it can seem chaotic because she can appear really loud with many sentences in capital letters (imitating the shouting) or the bullet points, lists, texts and emails. The titles of the chapters are also another particular feature of the novel. For example, in the chapter 'Being a Big Fat, Being a Bit Thin', Dolly talks about her relationship with food as the following quote shows:
I carried on because I just wanted to be happy and everyone knows when you're thinner, you're happier. I carried on because, at every turn, society was rewarding me for my self-inflicted torture. I received compliments, I received propositions, I felt more accepted by people I didn't know, nearly all clothes looked great on me.
This extract is an example of how Dolly approaches subjects that are dear to her. Often, we have phases in which we do not like ourselves or struggle with our body image. In this part, she reveals her conflict with food and her body. She found herself far from the beauty canons of our society and she thought she could change that by taking action and cutting food from her life. Later on, she realises that it was not worth it because society imposes expectations and images that are fake and ideal. Being human does not require anything more than being oneself, that is what Dolly wants us to be.
From a person in her 20s, I found this book really comforting because we often feel the pressure to have to figure everything out as soon as possible but it is normal to take our time. I personally cry rarely when reading but this book saw me shed so many tears. It is not because it is a bad book or a really sad one but more because it tells the truth that we often do not want to listen to.
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