Book Review: Ghosts

Author: Dolly Alderton

Genre: contemporary, bildungsroman

Rating: 5/5

Verdict

*slight spoilers ahead*

Ghosts gives a voice to a generation as we watch protagonist Nina Dean navigate life as a single woman in London. As her friends marry and give birth, Nina feels the pressure from everyone to play ‘catch up’, a pressure that seems to be ever-growing. Single women are painted as existing in a separate category to all other women, especially once they hit thirty. Ghosts both highlights and mocks this sectioning, showing once and for all that there is so much more to life outside finding ‘the one’.

Life is complex. As much as we try to compartmentalise everything the reality is that lines blur and our little worlds tend to overlap. From Katherine trying to have the perfect life, to Nina’s mum changing her name and seeking a second lease of life whilst her husband succumbs to dementia, life is shown to be nothing short of messy and complicated.

The story is set in London, which is presented as overhyped, splintered but loved. I do adore Dolly Alderton’s writing, it’s very distinct. She seems to be incapable of stating something I don’t agree with. In Ghosts and even in Everything I know about Love, her memoir, London is romanticised and intimate. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not flawless. You still read about the kebab shops and get that packed-in-like-sardines feel, but little spots of London are picked out. The city is filled with memories, nostalgia and promise. It’s perfectly imperfect.

I think my favourite element about this book is that it’s not a rom-com. It’s funny and it contains elements that could be considered romance. But really it doesn’t. There is no romance in this book. Ghosts is a commentary on modern dating and there is nothing romantic about it. Only imagined romance. Here it’s argued that dating happens more in our heads than it does in reality. With dating apps increasingly becoming the main way people meet, it presents the opportunity to dream and nit-pick. The same way you muse over a product, you scroll through a person’s dating profile and decide if these selected highlights make their hidden offerings worthy of your attention. You decide before you’ve even met someone whether or not you like them. And whilst that is increasingly normalised, it’s a concept I still find astounding and wild. Dating apps are something that cause me conflict, Nina’s musings vocalise my conflict.

And so this novel doesn’t really give a damn about romantic relationships, in fact dating is nothing more than a distraction. Really, the relationships we’re interested in are the platonic ones, the familial ones. Family plays an important role in this story, not least because we watch Nina’s dad succumb to Dementia. The novel explores how this impacts her relationship with either parent as her mum comes to terms with it and her dad continues to decline. Having lost a relative to Dementia, I found these scenes to be hauntingly familiar.

Ultimately, the book is an advocate for finding contentment outside a romantic relationship, something that is easily done yet easily overlooked. With good friends, a career your passionate about and the occasional night out, Nina shows life is not reliant on finding someone to say ‘I do’ with.

If you haven’t read Ghosts, I highly recommend you do. If you haven’t read Everything I know about love, I highly recommend you do. In fact, I get a sneaking suspicion that anything Dolly writes, I will automatically love and pass on.

Find the book on Goodreads!