Ghosts is the razor sharp, funny, tender debut novel by our girl crush Dolly Alderton, author of the award winning memoir Everything I Know About Love. It follows Nina and the challenges she faces as a privileged single thirtysomething which may, at first glance, seem like familiar terrain for a millennial novel to explore. Nina wrestles with generational conflict with her parents; the difficulties of maintaining friendships when husbands and babies arrive; and the quiet thrum of the biological clock alongside the vagaries of online dating and, more broadly, of a life increasingly played out online.

Like with everything Dolly touches, there were more than a handful of moments that rung true and left me with a copy full of folded corners.

“So much of the love you feel for a person is dependent on the vast archive of shared memories you can access just by seeing their face or hearing their voice.”

“I wanted him inside me so I could search for the ghosts inside him. In the absence of any context for who he was, I was gathering forensics from the inerasable fingerprints that had been left by those who had handled him.”

“I’m often told by married friends to ‘put myself out there’ and ‘have fun,’ as if I’m a po-faced spoilsport who is choosing not to go out for a lobster and champagne dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower with Dominic West every night. They forget that the great dates – the ones where you walk to the bus stop in the freezing cold at 3am just so you can carry on talking – happen about five times in your life. And my law of averages would suggest that one of those men will ghost you, one won’t be over his ex, and one will be the type of man who puts on a good date with everyone, like a charismatic magician on a sell-out national tour.” 

“He knows I would hate to seem mad. I’m strong-armed into silence by the fear of being called mad. So instead I just have to go actually mad with no answers.”