talk lit, get hit

everything I know about love by dolly alderton

• talk lit, get hit • Season 2 • Episode 10

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in this episode we discuss 'everything i know about love', dolly alderton's heartwarming memoir about the beautiful messiness of love and life. join us as we explore dolly's journey through her tumultuous twenties, the ins and outs of myspace etiquette, sharehousing, suspiciously bougie mac and cheese recipes, a bizarre mention of jacob's creek wine, and the enduring and unbreakable bonds of female friendship. we'll take a closer look at the themes of love, growth, and self-discovery and the timeless allure of being a "slim woman" meeting sophisticated men at gallery openings. listen in to discover all the things that make dolly alderton a true millennial mouthpiece (it's a good thing, we swear!) 

special things mentioned in the episode: 


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join talk lit, get hit podcast for deep dives into the hottest BookTok recommendations, trending contemporary fiction, and literary favourites! each episode features book discussions, spoiler-filled chats, and thoughtful literary analysis of novels everyone is talking about - from viral romance and fantasy to modern classics. whether you’re looking for BookTok book reviews, author interviews, or a virtual book club experience, out podcast is your go-to space for readers who love stories and want to explore them in depth.

talk lit, get hit are reading and recording on Giabal, Jagera, Jarowair & Turrbal lands. we acknowledge the cultural diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and pay respect to Elders past, present and future. always was, always will be.  

Laura

Hello and welcome to Talk Lit Get Hit, a podcast where we read viral books the internet won't shut up about and rate them lit or shit.

Bridget

We're your hosts Bridget and Laura, lovers of sad girl fiction and tragic endings, fearers of smart urban fantasy, and the Who Did This To You trope. Join us as we pick apart all the books the internet loves and embark on a journey to figure out why.

Laura

Happy July, listeners! This month we're reading Dolly Alderton's Everything I Know About Love. A memoir that promises to be mesmerizing, brilliant, deeply funny, sometimes shocking, and admirably open-hearted and optimistic. Top of the episode to you, Bridget. Hi, wow. Step back in time. Not too sure about that. We're still workshopping it. I liked it. It's the new hello, hello, I think. Top of the episode. Well, there are a few changes around here today. Before we get into it, as you may have already noticed, we do have some big news this month. Our dear friend and talk lit co-host Erin is stepping away from the show. We're gonna miss talking lit and shit with Erin, and we're going to miss her wonderful laugh making us feel a thousand times funnier than what we actually are. There will definitely be an Eren-shaped hole in our show for a while, but we're super excited to keep ticking off the genres and creating more talk lit get hit bonus chapter episodes for you. Make sure you keep an eye on our socials for updates on what we're reading, and feel free to email us at hello at talklitget.com if you have any ideas you want to send us. Is now when I make up for the top of the episode thing? Like, is there a redemption arc for me here?

Bridget

I think you're at the top of the arc. Top of the morning, top of the arc. Oh man. I really like it. I think it's the fitting setting. You know, Dolly lives in London. The story's based in London. We're pretending we're cockney people in the 1800s. So top of the episode to you, Laura. Thank you. Cobblestone brain rot.

Laura

How's your month been?

Bridget

It's been pretty good. I haven't really done anything other than last night I went to see Shannon Knoll. If you're not aware, Shannon All was the runner-up for the first season of Australian Idol a long time ago. Anyway, it's his 20-year anniversary tour of his first album. And I mean, me and Shannon, we've had a long, like sort of fraught relationship. I think our birthday is actually on the same day, which is always exciting. So it was meant to be from the very start. But if you had told that to my nine-year-old self, I would have been very angry with you because when he was on Australian Idol, I did not like him. Oh, really? No, I was a big Guy Sebastian fan. Do you remember who you wanted to win? I wanted a Guy Sebastian. I also really liked Cosima DeVito. Do you remember her? Yeah. She was so great, but she had nodules and she had to.

Laura

God knows. And was this the year of the Rise Up singles?

Bridget

Oh my god. Incredible. It's the golden era of Australian culture, I think. Before the final at Sydney Opera House, I remember hiding in my room with the phone and desperately like dialing Guy Sebastian's voting number just to kick Shannon Ole out because I didn't want him. The rest of my family really liked him, and I was desperate to be contrary. So I was like, I love Guy. When Guy won, I was very happy, but then I got both of their albums for like Christmas or something, and I quickly realized that Shannon's album was far superior, and I it's ingrained in my head. So I had a great time last night. I knew every word, I knew every ad lib. I had the best time. So that's the highlight of my month.

Laura

Fair enough. I can really back you up on that because when you got your peas and we would drive around together, you did have that CD in your car, and it was always plain. And I have to say, I can't like match your enthusiasm for Shannon Noel, but like I have to admire it for sure.

Bridget

But other than that, I've really done nothing other than like weather called me happy and leaves falling from trees. Always nice. And don't even like ask me about reading because I've read four books and half of them with the podcast book because I read it twice. So the other two was disappointing. I read The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazoole, and I it wouldn't have been disappointing if I'd read the blurb or like any information about it because it was like magical realism, ew, or like magic, ew. And a crime thriller, ew. Also listened to The Late Americans by Brendan Taylor, which came like quite highly recommended and was not into it. It was just like a group of men lying, whinging, and sleeping with each other, and it wasn't really my kind of thing. So that's my month. How about you?

Laura

My month has been good but uneventful also. Probably the pinnacle of my month is that I've had a real month of cinema for the girls. And fully acknowledging I'm super late to the train on so many of these, but Bridgetton season three, part one. I mean, I've watched it. I've seen it. It was a show. Yeah. I would agree. It was a show. We do have a Bridgetton bonus chapter streaming, and I think we released it pre-watching the show, and I think we're definitely going to have to revisit after watching season three. So that's been good. I I mean I love to join in mass hysteria, so it's been good for me. Another really, really good movie I watched was The Idea of You.

Bridget

Really, really good? Was it?

Laura

Really, really good. I loved it. It was exactly what I don't know, I hate the term chick flick, but it was exactly what a chick flick should be. Handsome. Pretty. Yeah. And I've also started watching One Day. Oh. So I'm really enjoying it, and Brown and I are watching it together. So hence why I haven't finished it because he has a lot more restraint than I do when it comes to TV shows. Have you seen the movie?

Bridget

Yes.

Laura

Oh, okay. Yeah. So you know where you're getting into it. Yeah.

Bridget

I don't think I've seen the movie, but I've read the book. Yeah.

Laura

I've read the book too. Yeah. And I saw that David Nichols has released a new book, and I have to say he might be the exception to not really enjoying reading men because he seems to just capture these really sweet, joyful, heart-wrenching moments.

Bridget

I'm really into the casting of the TV show. I just can't, I can't watch that. Save yourself. Yeah. Maybe I'll just watch it up until like the end.

Laura

I think apart from Matt, the only one that I really wanted to get to, but I didn't get to was the Sidney Sweeney, Glenn Powell, Anyone But You. I really wanted to watch that to round out my cinema for the Girls Month. Recent cinema for the Girls. Topical cinema for the Girls Month. Um, but I just didn't get there in time, so that was sad.

Bridget

I've heard mixed reviews. I've heard people say it's the greatest rom com since the early 2000s. Then I've heard other people be like, I don't know what movie they were watching. It was fine. I haven't really heard any negative reviews though.

Laura

In terms of books, it's been so disappointing. I have no three like short as shit books on our list. Like 150 pages max. And I was like, I just have to read these three books. I I just have to read them. Small things like these by Claire Keegan, The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante. Oh. And Idle Burning by Rin Usami. I haven't finished any of those. I only managed to read one book, or I guess two if we're including the podcast books this month. And thank God it was a really great one. It was Greta and Valden by Rebecca K. Riley. A bunch of people recommended that book when we were looking for books for our LGBTQIA plus month. And I had never really heard of it before then, but it was really fun. I'm reading Crudo by Olivia Liang. I should say I'm listening to it as an audiobook, and I was listening on Spotify, and I had like 20 minutes left, and I ran out of listening time because you only get like X amount of time on Spotify. So that's shit. It's like 17 bucks or something to get more listening time. Are you for real?

Bridget

Yeah, something like ludicrous. Like I would just buy the book. When I saw in your Goodreads that you were reading Crudo, I'd never heard of it, but I now I can't separate it from the dog and Kath and Kim Cujo. Like in so in my brain, you're reading a book about their dog.

Laura

A memoir.

Bridget

About Brett's dog, yeah.

Laura

I mean, maybe I barely understand it. Maybe that's why I'm so confused. When's the dog coming in?

Bridget

Bretty.

Laura

And apart from that, I've started reading one of the ARCs we received, Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato. And I am really enjoying it so far, and I have a sense I'm gonna really like it. So I can't wait to actually just use my remaining brain cell and focus and read it.

Bridget

I have about five books on the go as well. And seriously, when I finish them, I will be a new person. When I can tick all of those off, I'll feel so good about myself.

Laura

So I suppose we should actually start talking about the book.

Bridget

Rather than just Shannon Ole, Cobblestone, Brain Rod or whatever it was. London cockneys.

Laura

She's not even cockney. She's so chic. Not to like say that cockneys can't be chic. Oh yeah, cockney erasure.

Bridget

We're not here for it.

Laura

Anyway. So, Bridget, would you like to let me know your initial thoughts, expectations, hopes, and dreams before reading everything I know about love by Dolly Alderton?

Bridget

I would love to do that. This whole time in like the lead up, the planning, when you picked the book, voting, the whole time I was like, I have read this book. Nope, I haven't read it. I thought it was a book called Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn, which is not the same book. There's just one word similar in the title, and that's about it. But I still couldn't shake off the feeling that I'd read this book before. And I was listening to the audiobook, and I was just in this like haze of audiobook-induced deja vu. And then I realized that I've listened to Dear Dolly. Also by Dolly Alderton. So if I had just looked at my Goodreads, I would have solved a lot of I've read this. No, I haven't. Yes, I have. No, I haven't. Problem solved, I can sleep easy. You actually said so many times, I've already read this book. I know. And even after I'd been like, no, I haven't, I was still like, I've read this. So I don't know.

Laura

I don't know what's wrong with me. I think if you've read Dear Dolly, there's a lot of similar stories across the two. So in a sense, you kind of have read this book.

Bridget

I think that also there's like that viral TikTok sound um with a quote from the book as well. So I was like, I've read it, I know what it's about.

Laura

Did you ever iron it out in order to feel like any sort of anticipation or excitement, or were you just confident the whole time? That's really all I felt. Confusion.

Bridget

That's rough. I know. If only there was a way to see what books I've read that was freely available to me at any time. Anyway, what about you?

Laura

I had read this before. Uh I read it at the start of 2020, and I remember really, really liking it.

Bridget

I've also watched the show, which is pretty good. You can't forget there is a show, as we sadly have on our covers, now a Stan series. Unstickable sticker.

Laura

It's so ugly. We've got the blue sticker, but there is an even worse version that just has a small cutout of a clip from the show, and it's really hideous. I have read Dear Dolly as well. I read that last year at some point in the lead up to my period, and it was absolutely emotionally wrecked. Thought it was the best book I've ever read because it elicited so many tears from me. I I think it probably wasn't that good, but I was like, Dolly has like reached into my soul. I'm a changed woman. She's so wise, just like cradle me and stroke my hair, Dolly. So I think I was really excited to revisit this book and especially excited because I saw with a new chapter on everything I know at 30. Having just turned 30, I thought, hang on a minute. I need this. She's writing directly to me and me alone once again. So yeah, I thought there's never been a better time to reread this. So thanks for voting for it.

Bridget

I'm not 30 yet, so it might need to reread it when I'm 30, and then it can be for me as well. Yeah. Some of it's probably gonna go over your head now. I think one of the first books I read this year was Good Material by Dolly, and I enjoy that. I think it was one of those books where it all came together in the last few pages, and I was like, oh, that makes sense. That's why I had to listen to that man whinging the whole time. I get it now. And that was a really good payoff.

Laura

Yeah, I think you shocked yourself with that one because you were like, yuck, a man. Yeah. And then ended up enjoying it. I haven't finished that one. It's one that I've been carrying with me for about four months. Um and I haven't made it past the first like 20 pages, unfortunately. But I have read Ghosts, which is another of her fiction books, and I quite enjoyed it. Yeah, I hear good things about that too. It made me think about some of the other memoirs I've read and enjoyed. Always thought that I was like above memoir. I thought memoir was like akin to self-help, and so I was like, I don't read that. And then there was a brief stint where I was like, Oh, you don't read memoir? Yeah, it's like a really like soul-bearing experience to read someone else's emotions laid bare on the page or whatever. But then when I went to look and check, I actually haven't read that many either way. There are some that I've really enjoyed though. Basically anything by Helen Garner. I just love her so much. She's so sharp and funny and dry. Some of her recent works are like compilations of her diaries across the years, so she has the yellow notebook, How to End a Story, and One Day I'll Remember This. Another really amazing memoir I read is Insomniac City by Bill Hayes. It was very, very beautiful. I'm glad my mum died. Crying in Hmart, two of the recent classics. Gotta get through this by Louis Thoreau was really, really funny. Yeah. And if you have a chance to listen to the audiobook that he's narrating, it's really funny. I can barely remember any of it apart from this section where he was talking about how he was quite a nervous child and he was really traumatized by the tale of Wee Willy Winky. He says some sort of sentence about dreaming that we willy winky would be like skipping towards him at great speed with malice in his heart. And I just loved it so much. Probably the last one that I would add to that list is I Am, I Am, I Am 17 Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell. It was also really beautiful.

Bridget

For some reason in high school, I was pretty obsessed with memoirs. I don't know why, but the main books that I remember reading in high school, the first one, Growing Up Brady, I was a Teenage Greg by Barry Williams, the guy that played Greg and the Brady Bunch. I was obsessed with this book. I've read it so many times, and I don't know why. I don't know where I got it from. I did really used to like The Brady Bunch because I was really cool in high school in general. I don't know, I really like that book. So I have a lot of weird facts about Barry Williams in particular. Another one was My Bookie Book by Russell Brand. Oh god. Um, obsessed with that book. And the sequel, not as good. And also a different size to the first one. So one's tiny, one's massive, very unhappy. Also, very unhappy with his behaviour um in general. But um I think you gave me your copy of that.

Laura

Probably. Yeah. I think that was the first time I realised you could be addicted to sex. Yeah. I was like, this can't be true.

Bridget

A lot of it was pretty like unhinged to be reading as like a 15-year-old. But you know, we were deep in our Marty Bouche era, and like anything related to Nolfielding was like crack, I guess. Yes. So we were pretty into that. Another thing I was really into was for some reason like just reading memoirs of people that had like worked with Elvis Presley for a bit. Like, I don't know why.

Laura

And then also like there was this one book by You're never gonna beat the not cool in high school allegations.

Bridget

There's one book by Andre Agassi called Open. I was really obsessed with that book too, and I don't know why. Um, I mean I could go on, but I I might stop. One I read as an audiobook, Taste, My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci was so good. He is a lovely man, I think. Another one was My Thoughts Exactly by Lily Allen. She's my favourite Nepo baby. The Audacity by Catherine Ryan's really good. The Complete Persepolis by Marjain Satrapi about the Iranian Revolution. It's like a graphic novel. One I've read recently was The Last Girl by Nadia Murad, which is about the Yazidi genocide in Iraq in 2014. That was really interesting just to see like her struggle with ISIS and just her success in the years since and the work that she's doing for her community. I really like that book. Before we get too far into our discussion, this is our regular reminder that if you haven't read Everything You Know About Love and don't want to hear spoilers, you may want to hit pause now.

Laura

A brief content warning for you. Some of the themes of this book that we may discuss include disordered eating, body dysmorphia, substance addiction or dependence, cancer and grief.

Bridget

When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming a grown-up, journalist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all.

Laura

In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, wrestling with self-sabotage, finding a job, throwing a socially disastrous Rod Stewart-themed house party, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the Corner Shop is the only man you've ever been able to rely on, and finding out that your mates are always there at the end of a messy night out.

Bridget

Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humour. This is a book about the struggles of early adulthood in all its grubby, hopeful uncertainty.

Laura

So now that you've actually read, confirmed, yes, everything I know about love by Dolly Alderton. How are you feeling?

Bridget

I really enjoyed everything I know about love. I enjoyed it more than conversations on love, which is always good. Like I laughed, I cried, I read it twice and didn't complain. I enjoyed reading it twice. How about you?

Laura

Pretty much exactly that. Is it my perfect read? Probably not, but is it a read that I really enjoy? I've actually read it three times now, if I think about it. Yeah, I had a good time. I was really laughing. I felt very seen.

Bridget

It's always good.

Laura

So I guess if we're talking about a memoir, we're talking about a person. She was born in 1988. We've talked about some of her work. We have Ghosts and Good Material, which are kind of her two more recent works of fiction. Everything I know about love, and Dear Dolly, which I think is sort of a compilation of her Agony Aunt columns. There's the little blurb at the back of everything I know about love. And obviously Dolly Alderton shares a lot about herself online and in this memoir. But I found that for somebody who gives so much of herself away, her Wikipedia page was surprisingly sparse. I just have the barest facts about her. So we've got that she was born in 1988. Something interesting was that she was born named Hannah Alderton, but changed her name to Dolly in her teens. It's quite a precocious move.

Bridget

Precocious is a very good word to describe her as a teenager. Like there were some things that she said, and I was like, okay.

Laura

Do you know what you would have named yourself? Like if you could have renamed yourself as a teen.

Bridget

I mean, honestly, I would never even consider that as an option. Like it just not really in my personality to be like reinventing myself or whatever. I don't know, probably something stupid.

Laura

Mine would be. I thought it was the most glamorous name, and I named all of my Sims this. And I'm not even sure if it's a real name or if I combined two, but I thought Evangelina was the most stunning name.

Bridget

Something that I always named my Sims is Marlo. Not sure why. That's maybe that's what I would have, but I feel like that was after after high school anyway. But I don't know. With my last name, he can't have like a name that could be like an adjective. A name that I really used to love was Dusty. Snow pony. She'd Dusty? Oh, okay. She was named Dusty in the Snow Pony. Um, but I always imagined that if I changed my name to Dusty, my name would be Dusty Bell.

Laura

Yeah. You can't do that. That's a bit wrong.

Bridget

I think I'm just happy with my name, but changing your name to Dolly in your teens, that's a crazy move. I like it, but at the time I would have been like, calm down.

Laura

So Dolly is an author, journalist, and was a podcast host. She co-created The High Low with Pandora Sykes, which was highbrow and lowbrow culture. So maybe that's something we subconsciously swiped. Dirty little rats. Have you ever listened to The High Low? No. And maybe that's criminal of me to say, but have you?

Bridget

No, I'd never heard of it actually. I have seen her appear on um sentimental garbage with our fave Carolina Donahue.

Laura

Oh my gosh. It had a huge following. It was a huge podcast. Oh, okay. Um, really, really popular. But they wrapped that up in 2020. Everything I know about love was her debut novel. She had been working before then as a dating columnist at the Sunday Times, um, a story producer on the reality show made in Chelsea, um, and also working on TV shows like Fresh Meat and Peep Show. So she was embroiled in the scene.

Bridget

Yeah, and I think that's something I was sort of thinking about when I realized this was a debut novel. I was like, who cares enough about this person to have a memoir? But I didn't know all of that other. The stuff. I just thought she was some random just being like, hey guys, listen to my story. Yeah. Same as me. It does make more sense when you know all of that. So for a memoir and like a debut memoir as well, this book has really high ratings. It's a 4.02 on Goodreads, 4.0 on Story Graft. Do you know what you rated it the first time you read it? I think I rated it four stars. I don't often rate podcast books because I'm like, what if I spoil the episode? But I don't think anyone's like, you know, looking with a fine tooth comb or anything like that. I'm exactly the same. But I yeah, a lot of people in my friends list have read this though, and I always see people talking about it.

Laura

People do absolutely love this memoir, and one of the main things that's praised about this book is its treatment of sort of coming of age in the early 2000s, that millennial childhood nostalgia. And reading this book really got me thinking about our childhood. Um, we've known each other since 1999, yeah, which is insane. It makes me sick when I say that, but also happy.

Bridget

Yes, we met in 1999 at preschool. Always a great place to meet people. All the best kids are hanging out there. You came to my sixth birthday party, so fun. Highlight of my life. We weren't like really close friends in primary school after that. I feel like we're just in different classes, we just, you know, different friends. But then in high school, we were in the same class together and just like it was like magnets. Yes, then that was it. Couldn't have stopped it. No, it was not possible. Um, so I did really relate with her and Farley's relationship as well. Maybe a bit of a slow start, ours over a period of like seven years of like parallel lives, and then grade eight, grade nine, boom, boom, there we go. Magnets um future set. So that was good. But there were a few things in there, like um, there was a quote about you know the difference between birthday parties now and then. And Dolly remembers going to Farley's first birthday party that when they were first friends, and then her 30th, or just like a later birthday, and picturing her in her like princess dress. And then also there was a quote about how your friends stay the same age in your mind just when you met them. And I wouldn't say that you're still like a four-year-old or a five-year-old in my brain, but I feel like we're still like 16 and the same people.

Laura

Every time hanging out with you feels like the last week of school holidays, definitely.

Bridget

Like people that weren't around then and like maybe know us separately. It's like, oh yeah, okay, I get it. I get your friendship. Yeah, you know, like it's it's funny, and I think that's like her and Farley. So I really felt those similarities between us as well.

Laura

It's so true because even when I'm listening back to podcast recordings, I will be adding in my editing notes or whatever, and I'll say, delete whoever said this. Bridget or Laura saying dot dot dot. You know, like I genuinely can't tell us apart sometimes. Do you remember when people used to do like for a like? Yes. I mean, obviously you do, because that was a big cornerstone of my personality.

Bridget

But like a like for a like on Facebook, I always remember this one. Like for a like or like for first impression or something, and it was like, is that one Bridget or Laura?

Laura

We were a package deal. All of the sections talking about that kind of listless school holiday after school wasteland made me so nostalgic. It really got me thinking about our time together in school because obviously, you know, we went to a lot of classes together. We had our lunch times together, we spent a little bit of time maybe before school or after school, but so much of our friendship was based around school holidays or like snatched weekends here and there. And it's really interesting to think about forming a friendship in these little snatches of time. Like when you think about how much time you spend with like colleagues that you don't even like or relate to versus a few hours a day here and there, or a couple of days on school holidays in between, you know, the other dumb stuff you're doing. It's really amazing that we made so many core memories.

Bridget

I'm not really sure why this started, but we decided we would become Simon and Garf Uncle impersonators, and I think it was for a like a got talent sort of vibe. And we were like, this is gonna be great. Everyone's gonna know one who Simon and Garf Uncle are, to how funny we are, and we're gonna win, and we're gonna be like so cool. Educators and entertainers, and so we like made up these like fake personalities. I was Paul Simon, you were art golf uncle Laura, and we went to like op shops and we found costumes in inverted commas. It was just like Paisley shirts. You had like a fro sort of wig, and I had a like a long wig that I hacked off to make like a short thing, and then we found these Paisley ties, inexplicably, and decided we would wear them around our head. Sad to say though, we didn't make it through the first round.

Laura

What a surprise. But we made a lot of enemies along the way.

Bridget

My God. And I mean, I'm firm in the belief that it wasn't because our package wasn't hilarious or like, you know, well edited or anything. It was just because people didn't really know who we were and why we were dressing up as these children. I mean, that was the main thing.

Laura

But like we also just used to do things like paint shirts for free dress day. Yeah. I actually think about that all the time and wince. And I think we tried to create an air of mystery and exclusivity around like almost everything we did. So with the shirt painting thing, it was just in jokes, yeah.

Bridget

All over the shirt that we would wear in public. Oh god. We created our own YouTube channel, a very short-lived YouTube channel of about two or three or four videos, and we created these characters. I mean, if we're being honest, it was a rip-off of the Mighty Boosh, but we had a lovely time, and we made these characters, and then those characters were like featured on our shirt alongside Simon and Garfunkel, but like no one knew what it meant.

Laura

We are still to this day the only watchers of those videos, really, so as it should be. My dad really liked them. I think the Simon and Garfunkel experience really reached a fever pitch when we went to our friend's birthday party, delivered a DVD to him that had a pre-recorded message of us dressed as Simon and Garfunkel. Singing him a birthday song. Yes, that's right. Included in that gift was a signed photograph of us dressed to Simon and Garfunkel. Let me set the scene. We arrived at the party, playing clothes. Ready to play rock band, ready to eat like strawberries and cream lollies, have a sugar pie, eat some pizza, leave. But mystery was afoot because part way through the night, where did Bridget and Laura go?

Bridget

There was a knock on the door.

Laura

Unbelievably, Simon and Garfunkel had appeared at the party.

Bridget

So once again, we had to subject everybody to this appearance by Simon and Garfunkel and what freaks. Yeah, I don't know why we had any friends other than us. Did we? I mean, speaking of like Facebook and stuff, we used to have full-on conversations with each other on each other's walls. Like, I don't know why we couldn't just keep it in a text or like messenger. For some reason, all of our conversations had to have full-on witnesses.

Laura

But I don't know if that was just the done thing at the time. I think so, because I remember my space having a full-on conversation that was in comments posted to each other's walls about a boy I had a crush on and sort of having the feeling that like he was never gonna know, but also being conscious of the fact that someone might see how many friends I have talking to me. So I don't know if there was even the option to private message people on those maps at that point in time. I'm not sure. We're just two girls who love a theme and a costume, honestly. Yep. Anything that we did required a costume, some element of face paint.

Bridget

Copious amounts of planning, more planning than actual like pulling off.

Laura

And yeah, regretfully, we were those kids, definitely me, who spoke occasionally in a British accent. Oh, we were the author of Red, Right, and Royal Blue.

Bridget

We were obsessed with British culture, crimping ourselves senseless. Another thing in the book was people like starting bands with stupid names, because we had a band at one point. I was talking to somebody who was in a few grades above us at school, and she was talking about a band that she had heard at the school, and she was like, Yeah, it was called Forply. And I was like, I was in that band, and we had two songs. One was Laughter is the best medicine, and then in brackets, except for when you're vomiting, and it was so good. And then what was the second one?

Laura

I don't think it had a name, and I don't think it had more than a verse, but I do remember how it went. It was something about a little girl by the side of the sea, and it was quite a quite a woeful Nick Cave-esque ballad, very like in the little town by the side of the sea. There's a little girl with hair down to her knees.

Bridget

And we had one writing session with us and the two other members of the band, and that was it. We could not handle it anymore. They did not like what we were doing. We did not like what they were doing. Creative differences. That was the end of Fourplay.

Laura

I think I mentioned earlier feeling scene. I have to say, most of this novel is largely unrelatable to me, but the part that I found most relatable was when Dolly was talking about MSN. The love of my life. I'll read out the section. MSN was more than a way I kept in touch with my friends as a teenager. It was a place. That's how I remember it. As a room I physically sat in for hours and hours, every evening and weekend, until my eyes turned bloodshot from staring at the screen. That is so true. I really felt like it was an event or a party or a place I was going to.

Bridget

I've never had a social event or like activity that has felt the same as MSN.

Laura

There's nothing that compares. The unspoken etiquette of MSN is something that has stuck with me forever. Signing in and out, in and out until your crush notices you and talks to you is an experience that can't be replicated. And then there's just the feeling of euphoria when that little blue man lights up. Or posting an enigmatic status message. Feeling shit. Wish I could forget him.

Bridget

The greatest thing I think about MSN when you were listening to music in Windows Media Player, it would show everybody what music you were listening to. So if you wanted to get somebody's attention, you could put a certain song or a certain artist on, and that was like flies to honey. It was so good. And like you could just show everyone how cool you were, how alternative you were. Fantastic. And I was thinking about this when I was reading the book. I feel like the generation before us would remember their friends' phone numbers. But me personally, I remember my friends' email addresses and their MSN usernames. Certain people that's just stuck in my mind. And I know their email addresses from when we were like 12, 13. There was always someone who was like smexy, roxy girl, or like just stupid things that a 13-year-old has no business writing as their email.

Laura

The word smexy. I have not heard that in a minute. That oh, that's visceral. Bring it back.

Bridget

Billabong lover.

Laura

Do you remember your first email? Yes, I do. Mine was green underscore fat cat. I remember. Yeah.

Bridget

What was yours? Well, I had a bit of a problem with my first email. So my mum would not let me get a hotmail account. And this was a big problem in my life. And I don't know why she had this vendetta against Hotmail. I think she thought we were going to get like viruses or whatever. Probably more also for like internet cyber safety of a minor being groomed, but that was not part of my brain at that time. I was thinking, mum, oh my god, how embarrassing. I can't have a hotmail account. And so I had to use whatever her email was to log in. And I don't know why I just didn't ever think to just like do it and lie, but I was too scared to get in trouble. So eventually I was allowed to get a hotmail, and I remember it was heavily broken 626 because of the Veronica's song. I wasn't even like, I'm gonna be so emo and post this. I just really like that song. And I thought 626 was like a fantastic combination of numbers. You're not wrong. I had this online friendship with this person that I have never met, but I spoke to him every day for probably like three years. And if I saw him in person because we had like mutual friends, we would not speak. We would pretend to not know each other. Like even now to this day, we pretend we don't know each other, but we spoke every day. Like Dolly was saying in the book, one of my friends um had gone to a different primary school than the rest of us, and he was like, Can you add this guy from my old school to tell him that I'm really cool and I have lots of friends and like lots of girlfriends? And I was like, sure, I can do that. But then we didn't like talk about him ever. We like just talked about whatever for like years. We had going to uni together, and we never spoke. We're still Facebook friends. It was so weird. I guess it would be remiss of us to talk about MSN, MySpace, Facebook, Instagram without mentioning our other holy grail of our high school years, Tumblr. We, you know, we made our way through the levels of social media like school, and we finally found our home on Tumblr. And that was like life-changing.

Laura

It gave me so much license to write sad, enigmatic chunks of text with no punctuation.

Bridget

Mine is so embarrassing. Mine's like July days, wintery nights, what's exactly why? Like just a comma, comma, comma, comma, comma. So boring, but it was my whole personality.

Laura

Likewise. I remember somebody commenting once that I was obsessed with messed beds. To this day, that remains true. There's nothing I love more than a photo of some rumpled sheets. Crisp white linen.

Bridget

Oh, shadows along the walls. I'm I loved re-blogging photos of trees.

Laura

Just like vaguely English-looking people, choppy fringes, floral dresses.

Bridget

I'm glad it is still available on the internet because every now and then I just go back and look at how cringy it is. And it is a lovely time capsule to have. I'm not sure if I have any record of that time of my life, and it's nice to have that sort of digital archive, no matter how embarrassing it is to read.

Laura

The only other thing on this sort of early days social media that I wanted to talk about was this section where Dolly's talking about her obsession with MSN. And I guess for me it would have been Tumblr over MSN, but she says, even when we'd leave the suburbs and my parents would generously take my brother and me for holidays in France, it was still the room I occupied every day. The first thing I would do when we arrived at our new BB was to find out if they had a computer with internet, usually an ancient desktop in a dark basement, and I would log on to MSN Messenger and unashamedly sit chatting on it for hours while a moody French teenager sat behind me in an armchair waiting for his go. That is so true because I remember ruining many a family holiday with my sulky adolescent behaviour, desperate for reception or internet. I have one memory of being, I think, in New Zealand, somewhere really beautiful, and all I wanted was like dial up internet. And I went, and mum and dad paid the money for a crumb of internet, and I logged onto Tumblr and I was like, oh, just like I'm home, and felt like they don't even know what a creative, artistic, like soul-bearing side hustle I have going on. They can't even know what my audience is missing out on. This photo of like some overexposed flowers, crumpled bed sheets, and these white British people.

Bridget

I was not allowed to have that sort of um addiction. So if we went away, it it was I was not allowed, and I was not allowed to be sulky about it. And it was not permitted to be on family holidays away from the family at any time. I mean, but uh, you know what?

Laura

I was thinking about it the whole time. Main character moment, head resting on the window, yeah, headphones on.

Bridget

I wasn't allowed headphones. Oh, in cars, no headphones, nothing. Oh no.

Laura

We had to be as a family. Oh god, that's excruciating. I really enjoyed reading this memoir, but one thing I couldn't get past, and it's the same with every memoir I read, is imagining myself writing the memoir and just freaking out about the whole scenario. Having to write about people that I know representing them well, representing things accurately. I feel so mistrustful of my memory of things. I feel so worried that I'm sensationalizing things or embellishing stories. I think it's something that I do do. And so to put those thoughts on paper is a really alarming thought.

Bridget

My thought throughout the whole thing is has she changed these names? And I kept flipping around and in the book before just to see if there was anything like, oh, names have been changed, but I can't find anything about that. It seems like they're all real names. I think so. Is she going to get sued? Is my question.

Laura

Well, I don't know. Because I guess I was trying really hard to think about how I would feel if I were one of her friends being written about in this novel. And in this particular case, I don't think any of them come off badly. Any of her female friends, as long as she was clearing the stories about some of their exploits and just making sure, hey, I'm thinking of putting this in my memoir. You look like a bit of a crazy bitch in it. Yeah. Are you cool with that? Yes, no. I think I wouldn't mind.

Bridget

No, I was thinking Farley, like when it was revealed that she's now a teacher, I was like, wow. That's now public information. Personally, I don't know if I could write a memoir. One, I don't think I have enough things to say in a memoir. She's how does she have so many friends? I know. I was shocked. That's the main thing. But I was like, wow, like the things that she's done, she's a few years older than us, but not by much. The woman has lived. Like, I've really done nothing in comparison. And yeah, same as you, I would be spending the whole time thinking, these people are gonna hate me. Is this real? Did I make the whole thing up?

Laura

I studied creative writing at university, and one of the subjects was on memoir. And I found it so difficult because it is something that I really like to do. I've always enjoyed writing a diary and reflecting on scenarios, I guess. But the concept that those words could be published completely changes everything. It's just that sort of second-guessing yourself. And I think I had this idea in my head as well that a memoir had to be this really juicy, harrowing, life-changing story. I was probably 18 or 19 when I was studying this, so I didn't really have a lot of fodder for that kind of story. And like shocking to find out, but I really still don't. I don't know what I would write a memoir about. Really struggled with the idea that once it's written on the page, it's permanent.

Bridget

If I'm writing it like in a journal or a diary, I find myself editing even then. Like I can't be fully honest between me and a page because I I can't get out of my head that somebody might read this, you know, a hundred years down the track. That's what I'm sort of worried about.

Laura

I do the exact same thing.

Bridget

I don't really worry about people now reading it, but I think, you know, someone down the line picks this up. What are they gonna think of me? And I think I'm too concerned with that to like I mean, be a writer at all, but also to write a memoir and have that published. I'd be so wrapped up in thinking about the consequences of what I'm about to write to have anything good.

Laura

An early example of this self-editing is from one of my diaries in grade seven or eight. I think I've maybe spoken about this before, but whenever I got a new diary, I used to love to introduce myself, my life, all my friends, and it was like a yep, that's me. Laura. Brown hair, blue eyes, and there was one time where I said I was thin, and then I crossed it out and wrote fat, and then I crossed that out and wrote medium build. Because I was so terrified that somebody was gonna read it and say, like, no, you think honey. Oh no. And then like, oh my god, she has to be on like some sort of register because she thinks she's fat, she's got poor self-esteem. We've got to keep an eye on her. I think I'd feel quite good to be written about in a memoir though. I think so too. I'm off the camp. Any press is good press.

Bridget

I remember one time you were on a podcast when you were having your op shop Instagram days, and I listened to it and you said something about me, and I was like, oh my god. I'm actually famous. Didn't say my name, anything, but I was like so excited. So I mean I'd be pretty happy.

Laura

Yeah. But I think I'm just normally flattered to be perceived, even though I am terrified of being perceived. I think I'd like to sign off on the perceiving. Like, yeah, yeah. That's exactly what I was gonna say. It's a pretty fair request, I think. So interspersed throughout these books are lists of what Dolly Alderton knew about love at certain ages, and I enjoyed each of these so much. The novel opens with everything I knew about love as a teenager, and I think this really set the tone for the kind of comedy and relatability that I found in this book. There is a line that says, When I'm the single woman in London, I will be extremely elegant and slim and wear black dresses and drink martinis and will only meet men at book launches and at exhibition openings. That is exactly what I thought my life would look like. And slim? Slim is such a good word. It's like sort of codifying like that you want to be skinny, disguising that you want to be skinny. It's like slim. It's skinny but in a rich way. Yes. I don't know if that word choice how intentional it was, but it spoke to a part of me that I just didn't know I had.

Bridget

In London, tick for me. Yes. Meeting the people at like the book launches and the gallery. Oh, what a dream.

Laura

Just above that, it is important to have a lot of sex with a lot of people, but probably no more than ten.

Bridget

The commentary about the timing of when a girl should have sex. Don't do it too soon. Don't do it too late.

Laura

I really liked these summaries and I think they were a really nice way of charting sort of Dolly's growth or like emotional maturity or understanding throughout the novel.

Bridget

Every time there was one that would change from what it previously was, I was like, I see what you did there. I get it. And I felt really clever, so that was also good. I yeah, I really enjoyed those segments as well. But I didn't enjoy the recipes. The weird one where she was like, texts I've sent from my friend's phone.

Laura

Oh my god. I feel exactly the same. I took particular issue with that text one. Texts I sent from my friend India's phone. And listening to that on like 1.5 speed as an audiobook was particularly unenjoyable.

Bridget

I don't know if it's just like humour has changed since this was released or something, but I didn't find it funny. I found myself questioning it actually happening. I didn't feel that it was real because I don't know why that would be a thing you would do and include in your memoir.

Laura

And the little chapters that were sort of like excerpts, I assumed they were excerpts of work she had previously done. Maybe they weren't, but it was sort of like never really clarified what they were. And I guess I don't really know how you could have done that, but for me, it just sort of seemed like bringing out your best of and like flogging them. I really felt distracted by those, even though they were like thematically accurate. Yeah.

Bridget

I didn't like the emails, the invitations to things like weddings or dinner parties or, you know, baby showers. And I was wondering if it's because that's just not really the kind of people that I associate with in real life. Like if I was invited to a wedding, it wouldn't be that kind of Bridget Jones' diary dinner party scene where everybody is introduced as a couple. I don't really have a social circle like that. So I was wondering if I just personally don't find it relatable and that's why I didn't like it. Or was it just a bit boring and like weird to have included in your memoir?

Laura

I thought it was kind of like a caricature of those types of people. Possibly when this book was first written in 2018 or when I first read it in 2020, it was more of a fresh take. But I feel like we've done enough kind of discussion about that kind of bride or that kind of bridesmaid or whatever, like whoever was the butt of those stories. I found them really distracting.

Bridget

I don't think the recipes added much. I'm never gonna cook a recipe that's in a book unless I I mean, probably never. They also seem like the macaroni and cheese one was so long.

Laura

It was so long. That was what I was just breathlessly flip trying to flip through the pages for. I was so confused by that recipe because Dolly Alderton is telling us she's living this ragtag ramshackle sharehouse life. And that recipe had like four or five different types of cheese in it. There is no way. I would even cooking that recipe now, I'd be like, oh, one block of Colby's fine.

Bridget

I would get the box of macaroni and cheese. Like I love it. That would be such an expensive. It's meant to be a comfort meal, I guess. It's such an expensive comfort meal. And like just the steps, you've got to put it in this, you've got to put it in the oven, you've got to do this. It would take so long. Chunks of pages were like dedicated to these recipes, and I'm really unsure why.

Laura

Yeah, I think if all of those random little excerpts and recipes and exchanges were removed, I would have had a better reading experience or whatever.

Bridget

It would have flowed. I don't know if I like recipes in a book full stop, but I feel like a book like Stanley Tucci's memoir, where there's a recipe and a story attached to that recipe, even like Heartbake by Charlotte Ree had recipes, but stories and themes attached to those recipes, so it made sense for them to be in the story. I just wasn't really sold on their inclusion in this particular one.

Laura

Yeah, especially like with the mac and cheese that I can't get past, when their inclusion like contradicted the image that was being painted. I love that you pointed out the texts and the mac and cheese because those were the two that upset me the most. Listening as an audiobook was a really good experience. I think Dolly Alton has a lovely voice and is a lovely narrator. I know the first time I read it, I read it as a physical book. But when I was rereading again to take my notes, I found some of the stuff that I'd sort of glossed over when listening to it as an audiobook seemed a little bit cheesy or like overwrought after Vali's marriage had fallen apart and like recapping the just absolutely pitch-perfect advice she gave her. I'm cursed. No, I said, you're not cursed. You've had a terrible, awful, unbearable bout of bad luck. You've had more darkness in 18 months than a lot of people get in a lifetime, but you've got so much light ahead of you. You've got to hold on to that. And sometimes those passages left me feeling a little bit skeptical. Like, did that really happen? Were you really so articulate? I just found, yes, some of the responses to be a little bit like laid-on thick. And so I had to wonder, was that the response, or was this something that you wrote that was perfect for slotting into your memoir?

Bridget

How did she remember these things in such vivid detail?

Laura

I know we were saying it before, but I just really can't trust myself to not embellish. And it was something that we talked about a lot in the course that I did, like the ethics of memoir. And just because something is your truth or your perspective, like how much license does that give you? What is the definitive truth? How much creative freedom do you have in memoir when it is still a creative work?

Bridget

Something else I just kept finding myself thinking about is who are these people that she's talking about, especially the men. She sort of hinted at them being sort of semi-prominent people. There was the BBC newsreader, the guru, the guy in New York. Sort of seemed like they were like people about town.

Laura

Yes. I was also wondering the same thing. I am nothing if not nosy. And it was so dissatisfying to me that I couldn't get a straight answer.

Bridget

I think the person that I wanted to know the most was either the guru or the guy that she met on the train, who then ended up marrying an actress, I think, or something.

Laura

Yeah, that's right. I did Google it, but I couldn't really get a definitive answer. And it made me think as well, what a lovely level of famous Dolly Alderton is. People are hypothesizing about these details of her life. She'll get spotted on the street. She's probably earning a comfortable amount of money, but all of her personal details aren't just like aired.

Bridget

And like she's going on tour, which we're going to. Very exciting. That is exciting. That's really the dream, isn't it? Like be able to do what you love and get paid for it and then just go home and like have a nice time.

Laura

I would like to talk about the men in this book though, because I think it's something that Dolly is very aware of throughout the narrative of the book or whatever. But after a while, it became a little bit of a tired theme to have the man swooping in and teaching her a lesson or changing her perspective on something or lifting her out of an era of her life. And by the time we got to the guru, who I think is the last sort of notable man in this book, I felt like screaming, like, for God's sake, Dolly, don't do it. Like, just listen to your therapist.

Bridget

Listen to your friends. Listen to yourself. I think even at times she knew that this was not gonna end well. And they were all like walking red flags. Every single one of them would like irritated me so much, and I would never even want to have a second conversation with them, let alone a relationship.

Laura

As frustrating as it was, I thought it was really commendable of her to kind of air those unflattering details about herself and her own relationships and to make it known, hey, here's this mistake that I never learn from again and again and again, and it's messy and I make bad choices. Have at it.

Bridget

And I thought that was definitely something I couldn't do. No, I could not do that.

Laura

It was an interesting reading experience as well because she kind of creates this sense of familiarity with you. At least I felt like she was being so open and honest with us. So in a way, it felt like she was a friend, and it is so hard to see a friend do stuff like this or repeat mistakes like this. And so even though I was frustrated, I was having this feeling of God, I hope you pull yourself up out of this, and like, I know you're gonna get there in the end, Dolly. Like it was this yeah, feeling of wanting better for her, which I think is yeah, due to the fact that she has so much like warmth and openness in her writing that really invites you in and makes you feel like you are getting a whole version of her. That was something that listeners wanted us to talk about, actually. The concept of parasocial relationships and strangers feeling entitled to celebrities' lives. I'm not sure if this is the best kind of memoir to put that on display. Like I said earlier, Dolly Alderton isn't this like A-list celebrity with people hounding on her door 24-7, analyzing her every like social media move or whatever it may be. But I do wonder if Dolly Alderton ever finds herself in situations where people are like essentially begging her to be their life coach.

Bridget

I mean, as someone who is in a parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift, personally I didn't feel any like inclination to start one from this book alone. But I think the thing is with parasocial relationships, if you know it's a parasocial relationship, then I think it's fine. I think once you pass that line where you like genuinely believe that this person knows you're alive, that that's like a bit too far, I think. So I can definitely imagine people DMing Dolly on Instagram, asking for this advice or asking to be her friend. I I think people would say, I felt like this, I feel like we could really connect.

Laura

Yeah, I can see that happening as well. And I was also wondering if it's down to the way that Dolly Allerton uses social media as well. I think often those parasocial relationships are formed with people that are very much online and so they feel very accessible to you. And although Dolly is on Instagram, she's really just uses it as a business element from what I've seen. I haven't followed her for a super long time, but her work and her social media and her personal life seem to be as sort of segmented as you could have them be in that space.

Bridget

And I think also if you're going to be making money off your personal life, like Dolly or artists that write about their life in music or books, then I think that's sort of a sacrifice you have to be willing to make to have people that are invested in you. If you're going to make money off that, make that your job, that's something you have to accept, I think. Obviously with respectful boundaries. I mean, writing a memoir as your debut novel is inviting people to look at your life.

Laura

The only other thing that I would tack onto that conversation about parasocial relationships is a quote from an interview Dolly did with Glamour magazine, where she says, The only way that I can make sense of it now as a 32-year-old woman who is starting to really value privacy as the most sacred gift above all else, she says, The only way that I can make my peace with the fact that I wrote those columns and I wrote that book is that the very idea of self and personal values and what keeps her safe is a very, very fluid thing that is in a state of flux our entire life. And the article goes on to say that it took the fame that came with the roller coaster ride of her huge memoir to realize that she's actually a very private person. And so I think that's quite an interesting journey in itself to go on. I guess you don't know how much you can take until you put it out there sometimes. Because she strikes me as being really extroverted, and so I think maybe you would equate being extroverted with being okay with a lack of privacy, and you don't really know what that means until you have that option taken away. Something else that listeners were wanting us to discuss is if there's something that the memoir omits. And I have looked and I have struggled. And I fear friends that think again, due to the nature of Dolly Alderton's celebrity profile and maybe the nature of her work, she's really giving us everything we need to know. I did all my usual strategies. Dolly Alderton controversy. Dolly Alderton cancelled. And I actually really she came up squeaky clean. So I would love to say that I had some sort of dirt that I could uncover, and you know, you'd be hearing it here first, but for the most part, it really seems that what she said when she was speaking to the BBC about using this first novel as her place to tell all of her best stories is true.

Bridget

The only thing I can think of admitted in the story is the fact that she changed her name. When I heard that before, I did not know that. I feel like that's a big decision to make. Like that would have come with a lot of thought and a lot of, I'm sure, like pushback from parents and things like that. So, but I mean, you know, you've got to have space for those recipes somewhere.

Laura

So many of the positive reviews of this book praised the relatability and the familiarity of Dolly Alderton's writing, but in the inverse, so many of the negative reviews were making claims to the opposite. The most popular one-star review for this book on Goodreads sums up what most people seem to be thinking in a really succinct way, so I'm going to read it out. This comes from a reviewer named Catherine. I'd really hoped that I'd be able to relate to Dolly Alderton, but this has to be one of the most privileged entitled pieces of writing I've ever come across. Her experience as a woman in her twenties may ring true to an affluent minority, but she's certainly not representative of a vast majority of the population. Very few people get to spend their twenties high as a kite and being completely self-destructive whilst still obtaining an incredible job and having everything just work out for them. Can publishers please stop giving people like this a platform to publish this sort of self-indulgent, vacuous mess? I mean, I wouldn't say I disagree.

Bridget

I feel the same. That was the thing I kept coming back to when I was reading it. Even though I enjoyed it, I was still like, God, again? You're drunk again? You're high again? You have to hear about this again? And yeah, I don't know. I don't live that life. I mean, if that was your life, you would enjoy reading about it.

Laura

I had the same thought as well, like when she was trying to paint a picture of growing up in the suburbs but also holidaying in France, which I know is probably a lot easier when you do live in the UK. It's probably like the same as just going to the Gold Coast for the weekend. And I do really get the sense that Dolly Alterton is very aware of that privilege. I think it's something that she mentioned a lot throughout the novel. But I absolutely understand how this would just be too self-indulgent to handle.

Bridget

The thing that annoyed me about the growing up in the suburbs part is that she's growing up in a suburb of London. It's not like she's in a suburb of a regional town connected to nothing. Like she said that her town of Stanmore was like one of the last stops on the tube, but that's still a stop on the tube. There is still transport to get you places. And just having access to like everything that London has to offer a young person, it felt weird to me that she complained about it so much. I don't know how long it takes to get from Stanmore to, you know, inner city London, and I'm definitely like it wouldn't be something that a teenager could do all the time, but it's London. You're you have a direct link to London.

Laura

There was also a section of the novel where she was talking about how much she'd anticipated and looked forward to being an adult and the thrill she felt doing like the mundane parts of adulthood, one of those things being paying bills. And again, you know, it just kind of spoke to like the level of comfort and privilege I guess she's used to feeling because I think for many people living out of home for the very first time, paying a bill is only a really stressful experience.

Bridget

And I think she said that her parents said she had to go to university where she just did nothing to take advantage of her education. She was drunk the whole time. That would have been paid for by her parents. Also pursued a career in the arts. And obviously, I'm all for people pursuing careers in the arts, but you have to be a very privileged kind of person to be able to do that. Because if you don't have any financial security from people around you, there's no way you can take a job where you're not sure where your next paycheck is going to come from. You have to be realistic and you have to, unfortunately, find a job that will pay you regularly. Because if you don't get that money, then that's it.

Laura

There is a quote in that same glamour article that says, Dolly, for one, would like for everyone to stop assuming she is a millennial mouthpiece. The fact is, I'm hugely unrelatable, she says. That has to be pointed out. I'm privately educated and white. I live in London and I'm financially secure without a partner. I'm middle class, I'm cis, there are lots of things about me that make me very unrelatable. Particularly when women like me are overrepresented in the media and in publishing. I don't think it's helpful for me to be touted by others as someone relatable to a whole generation. Because if I was someone different and people were telling me that this woman, with all the privilege she has is entirely representative of all my experience in the world, that would fucking piss me off.

Bridget

I think it will be interesting to see as her career progresses how she handles that sort of criticism. Because I wonder if her being aware is enough to sort of squash those criticisms. Because I think as time goes on and if she's going to continue to take these opportunities that are available to her while she knows that she's not representative of these people, she is still being touted as like the voice of a generation. Like a lot of the reviews say things like that. I was listening to Catherine Ryan's podcast, and she is a straight, white, rich woman who lives in the UK. She's originally from Canada. And she said that she has stopped taking jobs on various panel shows and things like that because she's had her time there. She's stable, she's secure, she wants to give space for other people who haven't had a turn. And she's been working at that for maybe 15 years or so. So I think it will be interesting to see if Dolly like has still has that attitude 10 years or so into her career and whether she's like stepping aside to make space for other people. Not saying that she has to give up just because other people don't get a go, but I don't know.

Laura

Yeah, it's all well and good to acknowledge your privilege, but what are you doing with that privilege? How are you like leveraging your platform or I guess championing others that don't have the same influence as you?

Bridget

Speaking of those reviews, the amount of ones that had millennial in them, TikTok has really changed the meaning of millennial for me. I think we spoke a little bit about this in the um red, white, and royal blue episode where we said that the book was written pre-Tik tock and it was written in a time where being a millennial was the coolest, the freshest, the newest thing it could be. And I feel like maybe this book and these reviews have been hit with the same curse because it's not cool to be millennial right now. It's an insult.

Laura

I feel like it really damaged my perspective of the book even before I read it, because I was seeing, yeah, like all of these reviews. Like she sums up the millennial experience, and I just was already anticipating pages and pages of like toe beans and doggers. Yeah. Like, oh God, please, I'm not ready to read it.

Bridget

Don't talk to me before my morning coffee. You can pry my skinny jeans off my cold dead legs. And she even said something when she was looking for an apartment at some point or something like that. And she said there was a line of millennials, and I had to remind myself that that's not an insult in this context. I I'm so conditioned by TikTok. It's a problem.

Laura

Cobblestone brainwork.

Bridget

When you think about this book in the months and the years to come, which story do you think will stick with you the most?

Laura

Probably the story about Florence. I think I listened to that on my way to work, which was a big mistake because I arrived at work with yeah, bloodshot eye, red ring, yeah, streaks down my face. How about you?

Bridget

Yeah, the same. When the story started and I sort of clocked that she was speaking about Florence in the past tense, I was like, oh, okay. Here we go. I've been obsessed with this iPhone game at the moment, like in a surprise to nobody. But the annoying thing about the iPhone game is that when I play the game, I cut it turns off music. And so I had it playing over my speaker while I was playing the game, and I had to stop, I had to put the game down, which is crazy because I haven't put that game down for weeks, and I was very, very sad.

Laura

It was devastating, and same as you. I thought I clocked that it was in past tense. I sort of vaguely remembered from my first read, but I couldn't remember how it worked out, and I just kept thinking, well, she couldn't die. She's like, there's no way she could die, that's too sad. And I was thinking, maybe the occasional past tense is like a sneaky narrative trick. Even though this is definitely just not that story, like she's not ever trying to give us a red herring, it was devastating.

Bridget

I think the descriptions of Florence were so perfect in imagining what kind of personality or what kind of person that she was. And when I reread the book, noticed that the book is dedicated to her. I thought that was lovely.

Laura

And I really loved the inclusion of some of Florence's own writing as well. I thought that was a really touching and thoughtful way of honouring her memory, I guess.

Bridget

I think it also felt realistic in the progression of her illness and how Dolly was sort of on the sidelines as a support for Farley and her family, because I feel like in movies, when people get cancer and they're dying, like. Like the people are with them every day and and they're sort of present up until the very end. But I feel like this book like showed the the dark, realistic way that somebody dies of cancer and how it's affecting them and how it affects the people around them.

Laura

Another story that I really enjoyed was the story where it was one of their early house parties, and I think her friend Lauren possibly, there's so many to keep track of. She wanted to hook up with some guy, but she had granny undies on. And Dolly convinced her to take them off and said no one would notice, and then shoved them behind the toilet cistern. And then the next day, when the like Facebook photo album dropped post-party, which is also so relatable, yeah. There was just a photo of the undies saying whose pants are these?

Bridget

I really enjoyed the Rod Stewart party. I would love to go to a Rod Stewart party. I love Rod Stewart. When it sort of turned out that the party was a bit of a flop, I was like, um, why? That can't be right. I think the last thing that really stood out to me was when they were buying a bottle of wine or something, and they were like, Oh, we bought a bottle of Jacobs Creek to celebrate. Which is so funny because Jacobs Creek in Australia is like it's what your mum gets when you're having like a barbecue. Yeah. And I remember the first time Brian and I went to the UK and we were in like a supermarket or something, and we saw all this Jacobs Creek in the fridge, and we were like, What is that here for? It was so funny.

Laura

Australia's finest. Australia's finest, Jacobs Creek. I had a couple of random things that stuck with me throughout this book. One was the visceral reaction I had every time she said the word pudding, meaning dessert. I hate that. And I think that I've noticed it before in I don't know, like English shows or books or whatever. But I think something particularly about the way someone with Dolly's accent says pudding, pudding. Oh, it's awful. I don't like it at all. The other thing was the word hollybobs, which only recently came to me for the first time from It's Hardback Out Here, a London-based book club for people in their 20s and our mutuals. And I fully thought it was a really cute word that they had made up. And so Dolly has exposed them. I don't want to say as frauds, but to be fair, it was your your understanding.

Bridget

Yes. They didn't come to you and say, Hey Laura, we've made up this word. Do you like it? You just assumed.

Laura

Yeah, it just seems so fresh. Something about it like really took me by surprise, swept me off my feet. I loved it, but Dolly hates it. Yeah. She said something mean, nasty things. Mean that turned me off, honestly. I love it. I even sent you a text saying, look what they said. I love it.

Bridget

Yes. I think we should. It sounds a bit ridiculous in our accent. Hollybobs. Yeah. But I think it could catch on. I always find it really hard to rate and review non-fiction books. I have tried really hard this year to do that. I haven't always succeeded, but you know, there's still time. We're only halfway through the year I could go back. But do you have a favourite character for this book? I was dreading this moment. It is a bit weird when the characters are real people.

Laura

I honestly don't think I do. I don't well Dolly. Question mark. Yeah, it's really hard. I guess so.

Bridget

I think my favourite might be Florence, because I liked how she was described to just always be getting into arguments um at the dinner table. And I can relate to that.

Laura

And I like her passion for Wes Anderson. That's true. I guess actually, after you said that, maybe Farley. I mean, obviously it's all down to the way that Dolly perceives these people and writes about these people, but the way that she writes Farley to be such a kind and thoughtful and observant and level-headed, but like also seems like that woman has lived kind of person. I feel like you'd be hard-pressed not to be charmed by her. Yeah, I liked Farley too. Least favourite characters?

Bridget

Um, okay, I could probably answer this. Least favourite character? Probably the guy that she met on the train. Hector. Hector or the guru.

Laura

Yes.

Bridget

Yuck. Actually, any man that appeared in this book. Yuck.

Laura

Hector's charcoal nudes of all the women he slept with were that was an yeah, that's a particularly nasty personality trait.

Bridget

Sometimes I think, oh, I wish I could be that kind of person, but I'm no. I I could not.

Laura

I totally agree. I don't have anything to add, but either one of those is a strong choice. Oh, gross. And although it feels slightly unethical. Do you rate this book lit or shit? Lit. Lit.

Bridget

Thank goodness for that. Wow. And that is everything we know about everything I know about love. For our next bonus chapter episode, we'll be revisiting Bridgerton after finally finishing season three. To have your say on what we read next, keep an eye on our show notes and on our socials. Make sure you subscribe to the show, and if you want to be on the same page as us, follow us at talklit.gethit on Instagram and TikTok.