Ghosts

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Ghosts

By: Dolly Alderton

Narrated by: Holliday Grainger

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, FROM THE AUTHOR OF EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE

Narrated by Holliday Grainger, star of Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tell it to the Bees and Animals.

He said ‘I love you’. And then he disappeared.

Things that are going right for Nina Dean:

She’s found her dream job.
She finally has her own home.
She’s met Max, a beguiling romantic hero who has swept her off her feet.

Things that are going wrong for Nina Dean:

She has the neighbour from hell.
Her friendships are fracturing, and so is her parents’ marriage.
She hasn’t seen or heard from Max for weeks.

Just as everything ought to be falling into place, it’s all falling apart instead. Nina’s beloved dad’s memory is slipping away from him, and her mum is caught in a baffling mid-life glow-up. Her friends are becoming strangers and her exes are moving on. Everywhere she turns, she’s reminded of time passing.

The last thing she needs is another ghost.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE

'Utter BRILLIANCE . . . I absolutely LOVED it!' MARIAN KEYES

'An absolute knock-out… Dolly’s voice feels like your very favourite friend’ TAYLOR-JENKINS-REID

'Witty, touching without ever being sentimental ... Hugely enjoyable' DAVID NICHOLLS

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SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW (JUST SAYING BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE DON'T!)
To be a sole less than 5 star review in amongst all the gushing... Is a bit weird ...
I listened to this as part of a book group. We had been influenced to read it because of very positive comments from Fi Glover and Jane Garvey, and Elizabeth Day; all people I rate as 'good people'.
I think of this book as a list of Pros and cons, which I will attempt to detail:
Pros: Dolly alderton's writing style is clever and witty and full of brilliant little descriptions and assides and observations, she seems like a genuinely decent person. She is both self deprecating and searingly critical. I didn't mind this and it's endearing, like being at a dinner party with a very clever, witty friend of a friend... But you would probably want to steer clear, incase her scalpel humour came too close to your own weaknesses and falsehoods...
I liked the main character, Nina, who I did sympathise with, and whom I genuinely thought was doing her best...
The whole story arc about her parents was very moving, well researched and felt real. She hit several nails on the head for me, and all of my book group.
The reader of the audiobook was good, I found her very sympathetic and non of the characters were too off to bear. The volume of her voice does dip at the end of some lines, but I didn't mind this at all, it's just her style and was part of the pleasure of her performance, for me.

Cons: well, it's very uneven. I could almost hear the conversation between the writer and her editor... Add this, put this bit here, remove that...
Ugg!
The stuff about Internet dating and her perfect in every way boyfriend, until the ghosting, was so weird in my mind... We, as readers, were supposed to be fooled by Max too, and the first person narrative did not give us many clues that the guy wasn't fine...
But, the main character did everything right in my mind, she was amazing really, not too rushed, not too believeing... Guarded... I mean, how was she supposed to know... There was no hint that she was missing things that we could see...
This made me cross in the end, because as a novel, it didn't work. How can your main character learn anything other than cynicism, by being failed in such a way. To have a relationship, at some point you have to trust and open up. Nina did nothing wrong...
Men get a very poor write up in this book... I know plenty of shitty blokes, but also some pretty decent ones...
And, then there's the horrible downstairs neighbour! He is slightly uncomfortably portrayed as Italian... (stereotype much!?)
I genuinely thought that this guy would eventually turn out to be the real deal and would act as a juxtaposition to the 'perfect' Max... But no! Rather than a clever, moving, passionate exploration of what it means to get to know a person who is messily real, we got a rushed denouement and a horrible sex scene.
The sex scene at the end is grim, I mean, WHAT?
All of my book group members were annoyed by this ending. God, it made me glad to not be 30... If this is the best you can expect. So, a guy she is scared of, as far as there has been ANY clue to the reader, walks angrily, uninvited into her home, and within moments, and NO CONSENT is implicitly given, he has sex with her... It's just rubbish! It's depressing TBH. I know some rough sex can be amazing, but this is not that scene... I hope!
Maybe we are supposed to be disturbed and I'm missing something, but is Dolly Alderton really saying, despite a generation of trying to get away from this sort of narrative, that what a clever woman really needs is to be f****d and she'll be fine. Or whatever!?
So, I was a bit surprised that this was so uneven and pretty immature in places... Being in my 50s is probably part of the reason, but I'm pretty glad to not be in the 'target' audience for this book, because the 'love' elements are very bleak and deeply flawed... I hope young women don't really feel this in general. Groan!
My book group, all friends from a posh private school, all the same age, all in long term marriages, could not comprehend why this book has been so overwhelmingly praised. We talked a lot about the book industry, and how 'influencers' do each other favours to big up each other's books... It's left me with a bad taste. I mean, this woman can write... But this is not a masterpiece, and has some disturbing conclusions. Yes, life can be shit, dating is not easy and potentially very unequal between the genders. But, you know, careers are also pretty amazing too, and even the best marriages don't meet all your needs. I hope DA goes on to write a lot more and that it's more mature, emotionally rewarding work... I hope so...