“Good Material” by Dolly Alderton

theSkimm

Q: You’ve become something of an older sister to your readers — guiding them through breakups, fights, and female friendships. “Good Material” is about a man’s heartbreak, from his point of view. Why make that shift?

Alderton: I wanted to stretch myself as a novelist and imagine heartbreak from a person’s perspective who is totally different to me in every way. I wanted to explore male friendship and brotherhood, having spent so much time writing about female friendship. And I also just didn’t want to write about another heartbroken woman. When you write a novel or a screenplay, you create characters who become your roommates who sit next to you at your desk every day. I didn’t want to spend another year with a sad lady.  

Q: How difficult was it to write from a man’s point of view? Did you consult some of the men in your life?

Alderton: I interviewed 15 men. I asked them about breakups, unrequited love, relationships, friendships, sex, crying, drinking, masturbation. I asked all the questions I’ve always wanted to ask them, but under the guise of professional research. It was great. I couldn’t have written Andy and his friends without those conversations. 

Q: You’re hosting your dream book club: Who’s invited, what are you reading, and what are you eating?

Alderton: Zadie Smith, Lena Dunham, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Parker, David Nicholls, P.G. Wodehouse, and Martin Amis. We’re all reading Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s upcoming book “Long Island Compromise.” We’re eating a mound of salted potato chips dipped in sour cream and caviar. Alison Roman made them. Ernest Hemingway is mixing martinis for everyone, but he’s there only in a waitstaff capacity. Otherwise he’ll take over the whole thing. 

Q: What’s the best book you’ve read recently and why?

Alderton: “Arrangements in Blue” by Amy Key. It’s a book in which the author reflects on a life spent as a single woman and how that affects friendships, freedom, domesticity, family, sexuality, the psyche, the self. It observes things about being alone that I have never seen or heard articulated before. It takes its chapter headings from the songs of “Blue” by Joni Mitchell, which gives it a beautiful, effortless structure. I haven’t been so obsessed with a book in a long time. I read it on holiday with a friend, and she couldn’t wait for me to finish it because I wouldn’t engage in any conversation while its pages were open.