Good Material

Good Material (2023) is Dolly Alderton’s second novel. It follows protagonist Andy Dawson as he struggles to cope with the end of his relationship. The novel explores the ways men are just as devastated by relationship breakups as women but also highlights men’s lack of emotional support from their friends. Through Andy’s emotional journey, he learns that before he can be a partner to someone else, he must first learn to love and accept himself.

As a journalist, Dolly Alderton has written for publications such as The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, and GQ. Alderton still manages the Times agony aunt column, where she answers questions from readers about relationships. Alderton gained widespread acclaim for her memoir Everything I Know About Love, published in 2018. The memoir explores the complexities of young adulthood and Alderton’s experiences with love, friendship, and growing up in the digital age. The memoir became a bestseller in the UK and was shortlisted for the National Book Award for biography. In 2019, the BBC developed the book into a television series. In 2020, Alderton released her debut novel, Ghosts, which was also a top five Sunday Times Bestseller. Barnes and Noble selected Good Material for its February 2024 National Book Club, and Jenna Bush Hager selected it as her Read with Jenna pick for February 2024.

The source material comes from the 2023 Knopf e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material contains themes of alcohol misuse and food restriction.

Plot Summary

Andy and Jen met at their mutual friend Jane’s birthday party four years ago. After falling in love and moving in together, Andy and Jen settled into a comfortable relationship. However, after a recent trip to Paris in the summer of 2019, Jen broke up with Andy, giving little explanation for her change of heart. The unexpected end of the relationship sends 35-year-old Andy into an emotional tailspin as he begins trying to analyze why Jen stopped loving him. He composes a list of Jen’s annoying traits, but he still misses everything about her and the life they built together. Because they shared an apartment, Andy must move out and temporarily move back home with his mom. This, paired with the struggles he’s experiencing in his comedy career, devastates Andy’s sense of self-worth and leads him to numb his grief with alcohol and obsessively retrace the footprints of his relationship through old photos and music playlists.

Jane’s husband, Avi, is Andy’s best friend and a fellow comic, and he organizes a night out with their friend group to show their support for Andy. However, like Avi, most of their friends are partnered and have children, and instead of encouraging Andy, the night out only reinforces his feelings of loneliness and personal failure. Avi and Jane let Andy stay with them, and being around their family increases Andy’s pain as it’s a constant reminder that he doesn’t have the wife and family he wants. On the night out, he gets drunk and vomits in an alleyway, and his friends must carry him back to a friend’s apartment. Andy worries that his breakup burdens his friends and tries not to talk to them too much about Jen or his pain. Though his friends encourage him not to, he sends Jen a text message on her birthday and fantasizes that it will be the catalyst for them to get back together, but Jen only responds with a breezy thank you.

A divorcee named Bob convinces Andy that living on a houseboat will solve all his problems, but after two nights on the boat, Andy realizes that it was a mistake. He temporarily moves back in with Avi and Jane before moving into an apartment with a pensioner and conspiracy theorist, Morris. Between doing mid-level comedy shows and unfulfilling gigs like working a cheese stand at a food exhibit, Andy spends most of his free time day drinking alone and obsessively scrolling through Jen’s social media posts, excavating her life and searching for clues as to why she left him. Andy’s comedian friends, Emery and Avi, encourage him to mine the breakup for material to freshen up his act. Still, Andy has never put his personal life into his set and continues relying on decade-old jokes. Andy hires a personal trainer named Kelly, who puts him on a low-carb diet and subjects him to strenuous workouts, causing him to lose weight rapidly but leaving him ravenously hungry.

Jen begins dating a co-worker named Seb, and Andy unexpectedly runs into them. Seb is handsome, and Andy immediately falls into an obsessive search of his social media profile to determine when he and Jen met. Andy starts a flirty online banter with a woman whose profile says that she is called Tash (this turns out to be Jen using a fake account), temporarily distracting him from the breakup, but “Tash” ghosts him when he asks to meet in person. Andy then meets Sophie, his friend Thalia’s 23-year-old roommate, and he is instantly attracted to her. Despite their age gap, they begin dating, though Sophie makes it clear from the beginning that she isn’t into monogamous relationships. Sophie tells Andy that he should block Seb’s and Jen’s accounts to keep him from looking at them so much. However, he doesn’t feel better after he blocks them and starts using the browser to view their profiles again.

Andy bombs at a comedy gig, and after a critic posts a scathing review online, which goes viral, Andy realizes that his comedy career is failing. He breaks up with Sophie when he realizes that she is more into him than he is her, causing him to understand Jen’s perspective finally. At Avi and Jane’s son Jackson’s birthday party, Jen and Andy reconnect, and he learns that she and Seb broke up. After the party, they go out for tapas and drinks and return to Jen’s apartment to have sex. Andy’s convinced that it’s a new beginning for them, but the following day, Jen’s body language reveals that the sex was just closure for what is already over. Andy leaves town and stays with his mom for a few days to recover before returning home to begin revamping his comedy routine. Andy’s friend Jon goes through a similarly heartrending breakup, and Andy writes him a letter apologizing for their friend group’s lack of empathy and promises to be there for him if he needs to talk. He also writes a letter to Jen, which he doesn’t send, telling her everything that he loves about her. Taking everyone’s advice, he uses the breakup as his comedy theme, and when he performs the new show, it’s a hit with the audience. He invites Jen to attend, and even she loves his honest portrayal of the breakup. Morris was supposed to attend but is concerned about the rising coronavirus cases and stays home to disinfect the house.

The perspective of the novel changes to Jen. Jen tells her side of the story, beginning with a list of all Andy’s annoying personality quirks. She reveals that dating Andy was difficult because he struggled to express his emotions, and she was his sole source of support. Though initially attracted to his free-spirited lifestyle, she eventually became frustrated with his lack of ambition and self-esteem. More than anything, Jen knew that Andy wanted to be married and have a family, two things that Jen had decided were not for her. She reveals that the breakup was just as hard on her as it was on Andy, though she didn’t show it, and that she still loves him but knows that choosing to be single is the best decision for her. After breaking up with Seb, Jen quit her job and booked a year-long tour for South America in 2020, something she’d longed to do her whole life. Andy plans to perform his new comedy show at The Fringe Festival in Edinburgh that summer.