Hours after I have put this book down, now accompanied by a glass of red merlot and pop music pulsing into my ears through my headphones it is time I sum up the wonder that Everything I Know About Love was. All I can say is that I am not OK, but simultaneously, I have never felt better. There is a comfort to this text, a welcome hug at the start of a new year, rolling into being an unemployed 24-year old living at home with little idea as to what the next step should be. This book came to me like an old friend would, in a comforting nature and with an embrace that heals problems that are lingering in the background. What I am getting at with this review is that I just want Dolly Alderton to notice me because this book has healing properties. I read this and I thought of myself, but also of all my friends who feel similarly to me and that too, may find comfort in this text. I read this and think of the openness that comes with it.
For starters, it’s not easy writing a review of a biographical text, you’re expressing your own thoughts on someone who spilt their life stories onto a series of pages and no matter how narrow the topic is, there is always sensitivity to the matter. Yet, this book reads, for the most part, like a fictional text. Boundaries do not exist in this piece of writing, you are told what you need to know and omitted from details that you did not need to be a part of. This is, after all, a book on the author’s life and not some drama of an imagined protagonist who has no ties to the world as we know it. This book is a lesson, but simultaneously it is comfort. It carries with it something that has opened my eyes to that notion that it is OK not be OK. It is OK not to have the same things as your friends have when it comes to love, everyone is on a different path in that regard and having read this at still a rather susceptible age, the message has sunk in deep. It is OK to feel a pang of jealousy and not know how to deal with your problems in their entirety, you are only human. In essence, Everything I Know About Love taught me that what I was feeling is not only limited to me and my friends but everyone, it is refreshing reading about someone who has similar thoughts and simultaneously seeing some ridiculous things on paper with a retrospective air to them really resonated with choices that I have made in the past. I found myself agreeing with a lot of what I was reading.
Over the initial chapters of the biography, I imagined I was going to discover everything that I needed to know about love and how I was eventually going to have a partner by my side and that everything was going to fall into place. I was wrong. It is so much more than that. Dolly Alderton demonstrates the trials and tribulations of romantic love as well as platonic love, each bringing something different to that table. Perhaps the most important message is the love for yourself. I can count on the fingers of one hand the books that have made me cry and emotional, and Alderton’s masterpiece makes that list. There were definitely tears shed over the final pages, and I am not one to get emotional over literature but this hit me in ways that I found hard to explain. I ended up going on a walk after finishing it in an effort to process what I had read and the depths of my character that I had reached. In some way, I didn’t know how to properly process what I had read but simultaneously I was able to fully grasp the message that had flowed at me from the words on the page. In its entirety, it is a wonderfully written piece, nothing extra and nothing missing. The sentences flow with a conversational tone, it is like sitting down with a friend over a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, and catching up after a long time of being away from each other. With the integrations of recipes and various lists, the seriousness of some of the topics is supported by a familiarity of these inserts.
I often contemplate a rating that I give a book, going between a certain number of stars and even sometimes changing my mind at the last minute, yet giving this one 5-stars came with no hesitation. It hit me half-way through that this was definitely landing on that list. Everything I Know About Love is an immersive read, one that demonstrates growth and a journey that is not as smooth sailing as one may imagine. I wish I had read this book earlier, but I didn’t hear about it earlier and I don’t think I would have come away with the same feelings, knowledge and understanding which I am able to process now. It is one of those books that can get recommended to anyone, and frankly if I am seen reading it again and crying, pretend you cannot see it.
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