Ghosts by Dolly Alderton: Profound wisdom leaps off the pages as our protagonist Nina navigates a life thwarted 
with the perfect combination of liberation, self-reliance, security and absolute fear in Ghosts. Set in London, Nina progresses through an 18 month cycle in her early 30s, attempting to understand love, its gifts and sneaky thefts – love in all its wondrous magnitude, whilst putting herself back on the dating market, and equally, coming to terms with her beloved fathers’ dementia.
As a first person narrative, we explore Nina’s life first hand; her ironic pot luck in succeeding with her first dating app experience, her friendship transitions as everyone she loves seems to be getting married or having babies, her successful career as a food writer, and her various observations, self-deprecation and witticisms, as she comes to terms with who she is and what she really wants. Thus, in a very real and certainly metaphorical sense, Nina’s tale is about understanding her own ghosts – ghosts from childhood, ghosts in friendships, ghosts in her family and more recently, the obscene way that people can cut others off whom they have previously claimed to love. Embedded with astute social observations and wrapped in a type of feminist realism, this RomCom will have you nodding, sighing and laughing simultaneously whilst crossing toes and fingers for a type of happily ever after that only comes from an honest place.
Given the inherent honesty within the text, Nina was brilliantly drawn, along with all of the characters throughout her journey. Lola, her unclaimed best friend, is without a shadow of a doubt one of the best side characters a novel can offer up; honest, vulnerable, quirky and shamelessly hilarious. For the most part though, it was the earthy pragmatic undercurrents that didn’t apologise or attempt to be anything but, that held serious weight throughout.
Despite her very real heartbreaks, at no juncture did Nina fall into the typical narcissistic pit that saw her wallowing in herself for too long, and in fact, her reality was so very 30 something that she was able to start listening to and thus use her own voice to destroy some of the silence she had experienced for years. For Nina, her relationship with her father was a bedrock of her own identity, and in more ways then one, her narrative is nuanced with a philosophical take on memory, and how our experiences invariably shapes us by providing a framework of love and understanding that ultimately determines the way we live our lives.
Overall, Ghosts was a seriously impressive novel that covered so much in a short time frame and dabbled in trying to come to terms with what it is about love that makes us unapologetically human; romantically, platonically, and unconditionally – I can’t recommend the inherent insight, laughter and warmth within this one enough!
Book Info:
Publication: 8th July 2021 | Knopf |
Nina Dean has arrived at her early thirties as a successful food writer with loving friends and family, plus a new home and neighbourhood. When she meets Max, a beguiling romantic hero who tells her on date one that he’s going to marry her, it feels like all is going to plan.
A new relationship couldn’t have come at a better time – her thirties have not been the liberating, uncomplicated experience she was sold. Everywhere she turns, she is reminded of time passing and opportunities dwindling. Friendships are fading, ex-boyfriends are moving on and, worse, everyone’s moving to the suburbs. There’s no solace to be found in her family, with a mum who’s caught in a baffling mid-life makeover and a beloved dad who is vanishing in slow-motion into dementia.
Dolly Alderton’s debut novel is funny and tender, filled with whip-smart observations about relationships, family, memory, and how we live now.
