Good Material by Dolly Alderton

I have to start this review by sharing an embarrassing fact about myself, which is that I find Andrew Dismukes attractive. For those of you who don't know, Andrew Dismukes is the scrawny white guy from SNL. Oh, that didn't help? There's multiple scrawny white guys on SNL? Yikes. It's worse than I thought. Perhaps a visual aid is in order.

yikes. image courtesy of tv insider.

See, this is why I was embarrassed. Despite his 19 year old appearance, he is indeed 29. And despite years of therapy, I still have a soft spot for average-looking men who can make me laugh. This is unrelated to the book review, but the one time I was in close proximity to an SNL cast member, I was too distracted looking for rats in the subway station that I didn't see him right next to me. It was the hot one, too. You know the one, with the red hair and the annoying eyes?

So now that I've established how I feel about slightly ugly male comedians, I can talk about Dolly Alderton's second novel, Good Material. The protagonist and narrator is a 31 year old comedian named Andy, who is going through a bad break up. He is so annoying, so unreliable, and yet endearing enough to make me want to keep reading. Maybe it's my soft spot for funny guys, but more likely it's Dolly Alderton's excellent writing that made me love this book.

Andy walks the line between unbearable sad boy and grown man facing the consequences of his own actions. Or rather, he is constantly jumping back and forth over the line. Rare moments of self-awareness are followed by reckless behavior, and though I'm not a 31 year old male comedian, it's incredibly relatable. The ex-girlfriend, Jen, has her fair share of problems, too. Love makes us crazy, and heartbreak makes us even crazier. This book looks at a broken relationship and finds what we all hope we can find after pain or loss: laughter.