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Chargement... Good Material: A novel (original 2023; édition 2024)par Dolly Alderton (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreGood Material: A Novel par Dolly Alderton (2023)
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Dolly, you are, as always, my literary hero 3 this book was SO SO sO SO SO GOOD! the way Dolly Alderton writes women's fiction without hating women is !!! and especially in this book where 99% of the book is written from the perspective of a man grieving a bad breakup. the most compelling part of this story is that Dolly manages to take the reader through the mania, the bargaining, and the desperation of searching for control in a situation that you did not choose to be in, and she does it without making us hate the woman who has caused the breakup. i think it was important to have a section from Jen’s perspective at the end of the book. it gives a lot of clarification to much of the breakup and pulls the reader from the typical pedestalization of a protagonist that inevitably occurs in fiction. Andy is not perfect. Jen is not perfect. the complexity of these characters on such a molecular level is stunning. and a huge shoutout to womanhood!! Jen’s struggle with wanting to exist outside of a relationship and the implication that all women want to have marriages and children struck such a chord to me. live laugh love Dolly Alderton Dolly Alderton writes amazing non-fiction, but I'm coming to the conclusion that her fiction isn't exactly my cup of tea. I didn't mind Ghosts and Good Material is the same kind of feeling - it's allllll rigggggggght but not incredibly engaging. The main character Andy isn't always likeable or sympathetic, which is fine, but there's not much to keep me wanting to pick up this breakup novel. The story is of a breakup between Jen and Andy. They've been going out for years, live together but then Jen wants to call it quits. Andy really didn't see this coming (he thought that she was The One) and the story deals with their breakup in all its messiness. Andy is a standup comedian (and not a particularly successful one) but at the heart of it, he's just a lost boy making questionable choices. He's a sad character and while it's easy to empathise with him at first, it does wear off. There are only so many painstakingly written texts to Jen with just the right amount of casualness the reader can read through or awkward moments that turn to arguments. Much of the story is Andy slowly coming to terms with his new single status when all his friends are part of a couple or have kids. It's not always the happiest book, although there are some light moments, some awkwardly amusing parts at Andy's expense and a mention of Mr Brightside's lyrics. The strongest part for me was towards the end of the novel where the reader gains an insight into Jen's version of the breakup. While it confirms some things that the reader had expected all along, it's also a good insight into how the past shapes us and that an individual's reasons for doing something aren't always clear to outsiders. Alderton writes really well as always. She's on topic as always and the choice to write from the first person male pays off. While Andy is ultimately not the character you'd want next to you during a long journey, other characters are well crafted, interesting and refreshing such as Andy's best friend and his wife. The plot moves along at a decent pace and the insight from Jen is worth finishing the book for. It just didn't interest me all that much, perhaps because of Andy's insight about so many things. If more of the story had been written from Jen's perspective, it would have been much more fascinating for me - an insightful, modern look at relationships. http://samstillreading.wordpress.com aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Distinctions
"Jen has dumped Andy, and he's handling the breakup in exactly the way all his friends and family might have expected: very, very badly. Crashing at his mother's house and obsessively photographing his hairline, Andy embraces the rites and rituals of every breakup-the ill-advised decision to move onto a houseboat, the forced merriment of a lads' night out, the accidental late-night text to the ex-all resulting in a never-ending shame spiral. Even as Andy tests the waters of a new relationship, he finds himself drawn back to Jen, revisiting old texts and emails, trying to figure out what truly went wrong"-- Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Andy's not all that likeable (or funny), but he's not terrible either--mostly he mopes/whines about the breakup, and he is only tolerable because he knows he's wearing on his friends. Despite Andy's shortcomings, his story is mildly interesting, and as the months pass from summer 2019 to fall/autumn 2019, Andy's paranoid landlord/housemate Morris points out that something big is about to happen to the world; the pre-COVID timeline adds an extra layer of urgency. I liked the ending, but it was maybe a lot to drudge through to get there.