CHAPTERS on a man's view of 'Good Material' by Dolly Alderton
As heard through unsuspecting ears 👂🏼
Is anyone else into audiobooks? Until recently I didn’t get it, they couldn’t capture me in the same magical way that reading from a page and turning it does. I’m not sure what’s changed but I’ve been converted lately. It’s so lovely to listen to a story while walking the dog or taking the tube. But something even more interesting has come from listening to an audiobook this week, and that is the experience I had when my boyfriend overheard the last hour of Dolly Alderton’s new book, ‘Good Material.’ He’s not been able to get over it since.
Housekeeping note: If you’ve not read this book and intend to there are spoilers in this article. I would urge you to bookmark it and come back to find out what happened when you’ve finished the book. If you’re not going to read the book or you don’t care about spoilers, do carry on as you were. This article will make sense without having read the book. If you know someone else who’s read it, share this week’s Slice of Pie with them. Housekeeping complete.
So, for context.
The main character Andy is the voice throughout the story, a failing stand-up comedian who has had his heartbroken by a woman named Jen. He’s 35, newly single and renting a room from a conspiracy theorist character called Morris. (My favourite character in the whole book). Andy isn’t handling the break up with Jen well, at all. His comedy gigs increasingly bomb, he’s a bloke who doesn’t have the language to confide in his friends, so instead he drinks, smokes and crash diets his way through the pain. He’s a bit pathetic but also quite loveable. Then in the final section of the book, as Andy is about to step on stage with new comedy material about his breakup, which you’re given a strong sense will change the course of his career forever, enters Jen’s voice. After 44 diary entries by Andy, we are interrupted at a pivotal moment in his narrative, to hear her side of the story.
As Jen’s part started to play, my boyfriend happened to join me to listen in. Vanessa Kirby’s dulcet tones spoke to us and an increasing state of shock dawned on me. ‘How could I have been on Andy’s side?’ I thought to myself. ‘How could I not have seen this breakup from a female point of view until now?’ Dolly’s characterisation of Andy was so beautifully observed that I had been sucked into his world of heartbreak. I had been willing Jen to change her mind and hoping she would get back with him up until this point. I had been confused and outraged on his behalf. I had felt sorry for him!
Quickly I realised the error of my ways as Jen tells a relatable tale about the female experience of long-term relationships with men. She talks about Andy’s self-absorption in his own career at the expense of valuing anything to do with hers. His addiction to his phone, his insecurity and desperation to be a viral sensation on social media - posting and refreshing his apps every 5 minutes. His inability to connect with difficult emotions or to listen to hers - when she’s telling him about her dying grandmother and he reads aloud the wording from an advert on the side of a passing bus. His tendency to be dramatic, selfish, to misunderstand feminism and to mansplain. If you’re a female reading this, I would bet my last penny that there is at least one of those traits you recognise in someone you’ve dated or currently are. When you love someone for all the positive traits they bring to your relationship, some of these things pale into insignificance or you choose to compromise on them. However, for Jen it was an accumulation of too many minor offences which combined into one big sackable one.
Dolly, via Jen, perfectly encapsulates the complexity of being a woman in her 30s and the pressure valve which suddenly tightens around all of life’s choices. Jen still feels like she’s in her early 20s in her head. She feels attacked when she finds out her fertility is low and the nurse advises her to conceive immediately. She doesn’t know if she wants to have children because she can’t stand the idea of being mother and breadwinner. She wants to get a promotion which she feels she wouldn’t be able to do if she was focusing on fertility treatment, or if she got pregnant. She also wants to quit her corporate, well-paid job and go travelling on her own for a year. She’s scared to be single because society makes her feel that that desire is strange and alien. She goes to therapy, she has supportive, communicative relationships with her female friends and she processes the breakup with Andy before the breakup actually happens. For the record, she doesn’t handle the break up situation very well either.
That was harrowing!
As the book ends in a bittersweet parting with both character’s still in love but following their true callings in life alone, my boyfriend and I slowly turned to look at each other. His reaction was fascinating to me. “That was harrowing!” he said. I laughed at this because it seemed an extreme choice of word. “I mean it was really sad but it wasn’t harrowing?!” I said as I went to get up and carry on with my day. “Wait!” He exclaimed. “We need to talk about this book!” he seemed genuinely perturbed. “Have you ever felt any of those things she described!?” I realised he had been experiencing a similar dawning of shock listening to Jen’s side of the story. However his was coming from a different place to mine.
For him, hearing Jen’s side of the break up had been an unsuspecting look behind the curtain of the female experience of dating men. He’d unwittingly overheard first hand some of the reasons why women break up with said men and he was quite distressed by it. We had opened a Pandora’s box. This was most definitely made worse by my admission that Jen’s fictional experience was a common real one that I have witnessed via female friends and/or personally. I could see him rifling through his memory, sifting the past for times when he might have been considered an ‘Andy’ type of bloke. The book struck a chord. In fact, he was so deeply affected by Jen’s point of view that he brought it up every single evening for three days afterwards. At this point I wondered whether to reconsider my newfound feelings for audiobooks.
Our differences
Our debate, sparked by ‘Good Material’, turned to the nuanced differences between the male and female experience of more than just relationships. The conversation made me realise that no matter how much you and your partner might be on the same page, share the same values, combine your outrage for the same injustices. And no matter how much women strive to be on a par with men, to be viewed and treated equally by society and politics. There remains some differences which are inescapable, many frustratingly systemic and some which should be more celebrated, even learnt from. For example, wouldn’t the world be a better place if men knew how to process their emotions more easily through deeper conversations with friends.
We discussed the age old disparity between how society views single women compared with single men in their 30s. Women as failing, broken, desperate. Men as thriving, desirable, strong minded. These underlying prejudices stills exist and yet the reality is that women aged 30-45 enjoy being single more so than their male counterparts. Jen’s choice to quit her corporate job for a year of solo-travel is one that an increasing number of women are making. And this kind of antiquated bias, historically determined by financial dependency, has no place or relevance today.
The conversation got more heated when we moved on to the detrimental hit women take physically, mentally and professionally if they want to become a mother. This one is difficult because, unfortunately, biology is an inescapable factor. If you make the choice to become parents, no matter how supportive men try to be, the balance shifts naturally. As the child-bearer a woman’s body, mental health, work and social life becomes unrecognisably shoved through a shredder. While their male counterpart’s body, mind and schedule stays relatively unjudged and comparatively unchanged. No matter how many times you try to make them imagine what it would be like trying to push a baby out the end of their penis, they just won’t be able to empathise.
What did seem to hit home for my boyfriend though was a realisation that his female peers at work would not only be experiencing the stress of the job that he feels, but an additional layer of anxieties about their relationship status, biological clock and motherhood which he doesn’t give much thought to on the daily. Plus, the injustice that women continue to be paid less for the same work, are being priced out of employment by childcare costs and the inflexibility of many companies around caring responsibilities. These are the systemic things which frankly, I feel, only a new government can affect in any meaningful way.
His final thoughts on the matter were about Andy using the events of his breakup to write new comedy material, “That’s the scary thing about being in relationship with a writer” he said with a conscious smile, “you never know when you might be written about.”