“Good Material” by Dolly Alderton

theSkimm

Meet Andy Dawson. He’s a 35-year-old failed comedian who’s recently been dumped by his long-term girlfriend and can’t figure out why. As part of his quest, Andy ruminates, parties, and tries — unsuccessfully — to hash it out with his male friends. Alderton is the master of writing about women’s heartbreak, relationships, and doing things on your own timeline. “Good Material” proves she can do that just as well from the perspective of a languishing man. So we decided to ask her a few questions. Here’s what she had to say…

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.