'Most commonly, it is thought to have come from the idea that you are haunted by someone who vanishes, you don't get any closure.' ' The dread the reader feels for Nina upon reading this is borne out in spades by the pessimistic plot of this nonetheless amusing novel. She's never been on a dating app and has never heard of 'ghosting.' Her only remaining single friend, a colorful character named Lola who's quite desperate to settle down, has to explain: ' 'Number of schools of thought,' she said, with the command of an academic. Nina Dean is just returning to the fray of dating after a period of conscious singlehood following a long-term relationship.

But then I found myself changing my perspective as I read through it - to me, this book is also very much about what happens when we exorcise the ghosts of our younger, former selves, the ones we need to leave behind as we grow with (and out of) some of our most important relationships.A 32-year-old single woman in London copes with disappearances: Her married friends have been swallowed up by reproduction, her father is succumbing to dementia, and she's about to see what kinds of guys are on dating apps. It took me a hot minute to get into it, but once I immersed myself in Nina’s world I felt home (almost uncomfortably so) thanks to Alderton’s writing style.Ĭhapter after chapter, I kept coming back to the title of the novel: Ghosts, of course, at first seemed like a not-so-subtle nod to “ghosting” (a term Nina comes to understand well - same, girl). Seriously, wow.Ī bit Bridget Jones-y, though more acerbic and a touch more bitter, it follows London-based food writer Nina George Dean over the course of her 31st year as she contends with the evolution of a number of important relationships: with her best friends, with her ailing father and struggling mother, with a new boyfriend, and with her career. And wow, I really, REALLY wasn’t ready for the emotional terrorism that this extremely sharp novel wrought on my brain/heart/all of the above.

I’d never read Dolly Alderton before, and actually grabbed her latest, Ghosts, on a whim.

Ghosts dolly alderton paperback