Ghosts
From the bestselling author of Everything I Know About Love and Good Material
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3.6 • 21 Ratings
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- €5.99
Publisher Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, FROM THE AUTHOR OF EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE
'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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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.
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE
'A book so relatable you'll give yourself neck ache nodding in recognition' GRAZIA
'Bittersweet, funny, and occasionally gut-wrenching’ STYLIST
Sunday Times bestselling author, January 2024
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
As the award-winning author of one of the most beloved memoirs of recent times (Everything I Know About Love) and co-host of a hugely popular podcast (The High Low), Dolly Alderton has already firmly established herself as a voice of the millennial generation. Her debut novel, Ghosts, will only solidify that status. In this touching novel that bears shades of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, our narrator is Nina Dean, a 32-year-old food writer living in London. Her ghosts? Max, the charming man she met on a dating app and who, just as she falls for him, disappears without warning; her beloved father whose brilliant, inspiring mind is rapidly being lost to dementia; and her best friend Katherine—the connection they’ve shared ever since they were young fading out as their lives begin to diverge. Just as you’d expect from Alderton, Ghosts is a novel crammed with biting wit and sharp social observations about everything from modern relationships to female friendship and family dynamics. All of which makes Ghosts a painfully, hilariously relatable read. But more than that, this is a heartwarming, hopeful story of coming to terms with change and forging your own way through adulthood.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sprightly, sometimes touching debut novel by British memoirist Alderton (Everything I Know About Love) follows a cookbook author through her life's "strangest year." Nina, 32, has bought a flat in London and is taking a break from men after amicably breaking up with her first boyfriend, Joe, who has since gotten engaged and with whom she remains friends. Now, with most of her friends married, having kids, and moving to the suburbs, she hits a dating app in search of love. She promptly meets Max, a 37-year-old surfer, "his eyes shining, his beard golden brown, his skin burnished from sunbeams." Things between them go swimmingly for months before he ghosts her, leaving her to cope with heartbreak, her beloved father's advancing dementia, her increasing estrangement from her friends, and her unnerving downstairs neighbor. Alderton doesn't exactly cover new ground as she moves through the obligatory scenes: an awkward weekend with Joe's fiancée and her friends, an uncomfortable wedding, difficult conversations with Nina's parents, and frustrating get-togethers with old friends. Still, this should hit the spot for readers of women's fiction who appreciate the familiar.
