Book Club Session 3 - Everything I Know About Love

Welcome to Session 3 of Book Club - a monthly review of books I've been loving and think you will too. So pull up a chair, grab a cup of tea and a biscuit and get ready! A brutally honest tale of love, loss and laughter to be passed around friends and loved ones; Dolly Alderton's everything I know about love is the Hattie's World Book Club pick of September.

Do you ever feel like everyone around you has their shit together and you're a bit lost, a bit aimless and not really acting your age? So do I. And so does Dolly Alderton in her hilarious, beautiful and deeply honest book everything I know about love. A truly personal, yet universal account of the modern woman navigating changing identities, relationships and friendships, this book is a must-read for any young woman stepping out into the world looking for some semblance of comfort and reassurance that everything will turn out ok.

This book came to me by the hands of my best friend's older sister. Both in similar places in terms of relationships - extremely single! - we slowly realised we were both experiencing the same feeling of confusion and disorientation. As I explained to her that I'm enjoying the single life but can't seem to shake the pressure of finding a boyfriend, she immediately thrust this book upon me - and I'm so glad she did! Reading Alderton's experience was like living the past year of my life through borrowed eyes. Comforting and stark in its frankness, everything I know about love came to me exactly when I needed it.

Dolly's friendship with Farly, her childhood best friend, and the ups and downs they live through together - failed relationships, successful relationships, first kisses, good sex, bad sex, love and loss - truly encapsulates the beauty of female friendships. But what Alderton does so well is capturing the turbulence of change within these friendships. She successfully draws attention to the fact that, even when a friendship has surpassed years, even decades, change sucks. It's normal that it sucks, but it doesn't stop it from being difficult and painful. Whether that change be leaving school, moving out, going to university, getting a new boyfriend or in this case, your best friend getting engaged, these moments can seem scary and life altering and more often than not, they don't happen in the way you'd planned it.

"I know people grow up and things change but Christ I never thought everything would change when we were only twenty-five"

Despite her accurate description of this fear of change, Alderton is excellent at making her readers feel comforted by this anxiety rather than scared of it. Everyone feels the fear of change at some point, that's what growing up is about, but it's important to recognise that it's normal, and doesn't mean that there's actually anything to be scared of.

Alderton is still single when the book ends, despite spending over 300 pages navigating heartbreak and bad dates. However, she focuses on how she has found love in an alternative way - in her female friendships. She writes 'nearly everything I know about love, I've learnt in my long-term friendships with women'... 'I know what it's like to weather a bad experience and turn it into a shared mythology'... 'I know what it is to love someone and accept that you can't change certain things about them'... 'I know what a crisis point in a relationship feels like'... 'I know that love can be loud and jubilant'... 'I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing'... 'I know what it is to feel like you've got a lighthouse - lighthouses - to guide you back to dry land'. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautiful descriptions of the love in female friendships that I've ever read, and I'm lucky enough to be able to relate to it. Alderton's novel paused my worrying about the future and encouraged me to focus on the love that can be found in the day-to-day, and to appreciate it. I hope you can do the same.

"Life is a wonderful, mesmerising, magical, fun, silly thing. And humans are astounding. We all know we're going to die, and yet we still live. We shout and curse and care when the full bin bag breaks, yet with every minute that passes we are closer to the end. We marvel at a nectarine sunset over the M25 or the smell of a baby's head or the efficiency of flat-pack furniture, even though we know that everyone we love will cease to exist one day. I don't know how we do it" - Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love