55 pages • 1 hour read
Dolly AldertonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Memoir is a genre of nonfiction that focuses on a significant time in the author’s life or chronicles the author’s dealings with a specific topic (e.g., love, religion, coming-of-age). What differentiates memoir from autobiography is that an autobiography covers the author’s entire life whereas a memoir is traditionally more tightly focused. Memoir relies on the conventions of creative nonfiction, such as narrative structure, characterization, and the balance between exposition and scene. As with all nonfiction, memoirs can incorporate epistolary elements such as letters, emails, text messages, newspaper articles, photographs, and other real-world content related to the author’s life and the topics their memoir explores. Alderton’s memoir is structured as a chronological narrative, but there are some instances of flashing back or forward, such as the chapter about Farly’s younger sister, Florence, who is mentioned briefly in other chapters before the one devoted to her. Everything I Know about Love also includes transcripts of text messages and emails, some of which are real, while others may be invented as an occasion for satirical commentary on the artistic scene, baby showers, weddings, and other supposed milestones in a Western woman’s life.
Memoir is one of the most accessible genres of nonfiction—anyone who has any lived experience can write a memoir, and many memoirists now self-publish—which creates a wide space for many marginalized voices to have a platform. Conversely, that same accessibility makes some critics bristle; one argument against memoir is that it is a genre for people who seek only financial or professional advancement or are chasing clout by sharing their stories publicly. Much contemporary self-writing takes the form of shorter nonfiction writing, like essays, columns, or blogs: Chanel Miller, the author of Know My Name (2019) first captured public attention with her victim impact statement during her court case about being sexually assaulted at Stanford by Brock Turner; Stephanie Land’s Maid (2019) started as a viral essay on Vox. Alderton’s own memoir can be viewed as a similar branching-off of her journalism work, in which she writes columns on love and dating.
Alderton’s birth year, 1988, places her in the upper range of the millennial generation. “Millennial” refers to individuals born between 1981 and 1996 though there is often some disagreement among researchers regarding which years mark the most precise generational boundaries. Millennials grew up during a period of constant technological advancement and are widely regarded as the first generation to share their lives online. Due to regularly adapting to new technology, millennials are often characterized as being adaptable, curious, and generally embracing change. As Alderton grows up, the reader sees that although she is curious by nature—always searching for new stories and new adventures—she actually dreads periods of transition and the life-changes that accompany them. Alderton actively works to keep her friend group on the same life path as herself, even if doing so feels disingenuous.
Millennials grew up with the internet, and as they moved their lives online, they became more comfortable with new modes of digital communication. In Alderton’s memoir, the primary form of such communication is her use of online dating apps like Tinder. From the memoir’s first chapters, Alderton makes clear to the reader exactly what the internet means to her: It provides access to communities and offers a place for her to feel accepted. Through AOL chat rooms, she meets and befriends boys, eventually meeting some of them in real life—though these meetings rarely live up to her expectations. Alderton is aware why these first in-person dates often fail: One’s ability to curate a perfect version of themselves online does not translate into real-life interactions. Alderton remarks that “this was the only way I had learned how to get to know someone, with a distance between us, with enough space for me to curate and filter the best version of myself possible,” signaling to the reader that her online interactions made it difficult for her to be genuine with others in “real life” (17). When she cannot edit herself, she worries that the unfiltered image she presents is not good enough.
In the same way that there is an unspoken code of conduct for the chat rooms with which Alderton grew up (avatars, status indicators, and usernames are loaded with signals to other users), there is also an unspoken generational etiquette to dating online and in-person. Alderton explains some of these rules to Farly, such as, “sometimes a man will like the look of you at a party and not speak to you but then Facebook message you afterward saying he wishes he had spoken to you” (297). The rules of this courtship are ever-changing as new technologies hit the market—Alderton’s memoir covers the advent of AOL Instant Messaging, Facebook, and online dating apps, such as Tinder. Alderton makes it clear that any in-person sighting of an attractive potential partner will ultimately end up in a digital space. Conversations over drinks or hours-long phone calls are gradually replaced by texts and emails. Alderton often struggles to understand herself in the memoir because she performs a version of herself online for other people and then can scroll through the conversation and see this performance again and again. The internet and dating apps become a space where performer and audience are melded into one, and Alderton struggles to emulate in reality the unreal version of herself she performs and witnesses online.
Like Alderton herself, many readers of her memoir likely grew up witnessing (and perhaps wishing to emulate in their own lives) the profound saturation of popular media with narratives of romantic and sexual attachments. Television programs and films not only offer viewers a glimpse of enviable love forms but also expose a deep-rooted cultural discomfort with love. One sees this discomfort often in Alderton’s memoir—love promises it is good for us, but it often has negative effects. Harry’s cruel shaming of Alderton’s behavior in public, which is the culmination of a long-term disgust with fundamental aspects of her personality, as well as Hector’s (perhaps unwitting) casting of Alderton as both a motherly figure and a maid, demonstrate love’s two sides. Alderton searches for safety and security in romantic relationships, but she instead finds fleeting kindness, toxic co-dependence, and even shocking cruelty. Throughout the memoir, she must navigate the ways in which love can become a problem as love challenges her core beliefs about how she can live happily with (and without) significant others.
Through the work of philosophers like Alain Badiou, Robert Solomon, and Simon May, contemporary philosophy strives to identify and reinforce a recognizable form of love—specifically, love as a powerful affective attachment between two individuals that endures through time. However, as one attempts to classify love forms, our understanding of love slides from what it is and does to what it should do or be. The assumption that love should last forever becomes a source of shame for young people, especially young women like Alderton, who struggle to find romantic love that lasts because for love to be valid, it must not fail. Bearing in mind the problematic conflation of long-term love with “real” love, the risk of failure makes love itself seem dangerous. In Alderton’s opening chapter, she makes clear that as a teenager, she believed that to be without romantic love in adulthood means one has failed as an adult. She fully subscribes to the narrative that romantic love is the most important attachment a young woman can have and that in order for that love to be legitimate, it must endure across time.
As Alderton ages and experiences romantic relationships, she realizes that compared to the love stories in her childhood media, “Real life was always a disappointment because the narrative of romance in [her] head was completely unattainable” (357). If Alderton can recognize the romance narratives she consumes through various media, she can then challenge how she thinks about love in her own life. By throwing off her old definition of love, and all the expectations that came with it, Alderton can theorize what love means, is, and does for herself and how all of those components change as she continues aging. The conclusion she reaches by the memoir’s end is that a romantic love is not the only legitimate love form and that self-love and the love of her close female friends are just as legitimate and just as gratifying, secure, and empowering as romantic love, if not more so.
By Dolly Alderton
Books that Feature the Theme of...
View Collection
Essays & Speeches
View Collection
Friendship
View Collection
Inspiring Biographies
View Collection
Laugh-out-Loud Books
View Collection
Popular Book Club Picks
View Collection
Romance
View Collection
Self-Help Books
View Collection
The Best of "Best Book" Lists
View Collection
Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love
View Collection