If you were one of thousands of readers who were captivated by Sally Rooney’s runaway hit “Normal People,” which told of young, awkward on-again/off-again love between two Irish young adults, pick up “Ghosts” by Dolly Alderton.
Newly released in the US, the book has occupied a place on the UK bestseller lists since fall 2020; her early memoir, “Everything I Know About Love,” was also a huge hit.
And both with good reason. “Ghosts” tells the story of Nina, a thirtysomething food writer living in London. She meets a man named Max on a dating app, and he seems just about perfect — until, that is, he ghosts her after mentioning love and marriage. Nina navigates his sudden disappearance as most of her friends have already married and had children; her friend Lola is her only fellow single pal left. Back home, her father’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse, and her mother isn’t dealing well with it.
The book is by turns heartbreaking, and often sharply hilarious in its examination of modern love and dating; it goes far beyond the superficial with its portrayal of love, loss and single life. “I’ve heard about this ghosting,” says one character. “It happened to my sister recently.” “Yeah. London is basically one big haunted house fairground ride for me right now,” remarks another.
Alderton wrote a column about love and dating for a decade in London’s Sunday Times; she has a popular podcast called The High Low with co-host Pandora Sykes, in which they discuss pop culture and assorted trending topics. When she recently posted a picture on Instagram of a dinner date named Max, followers who believed him to be the same Max who ghosts in the novel, chided her for “taking him back.”
While the Max in the book isn’t based on anyone specific, the heartache caused by callous treatment will definitely resonate with readers.
“Was it a game you wanted to complete?” asks Nina in one highly satisfying scene where she calls out Lola’s ex boyfriend for ghosting.
“You met a woman who had her life together, and you wanted to see if you could pull it apart? You wanted to know that you could get her to fall in love with you, say all the things you wanted her to say, do all the things you wanted her to do, then the game was finished and you could turn it off? You know, every time you ‘change your mind’ in such an extreme way, it takes something from a woman. It’s an act of theft. It’s not just a theft of her trust, it’s a theft of her time.”
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