Early in Dolly Alderton’s best-selling second novel, “Good Material,” her 31-year-old protagonist, Andy, is carrying his best friend’s son on his shoulders when the boy unleashes a stream of brutal commentary about a third-rail topic: the bald spot on the back of Andy’s head. It’s a hilarious scene — and a refreshing one. Clearly we’re in the hands of the rare author who is going to let kids be kids. We know the alternative: fictional children who are too cute, too clever or mysteriously in possession of a Yoda-like pithiness that puts adult intellect to shame.
How did Alderton, who doesn’t have children, strike a realistic chord for her young characters? She listened to her best friends’ offspring. “I spend lots of time around little mouths and little brains,” Alderton said in a phone interview. “Nothing jolts you out of a story more than when you hear children being written as an adult memory of what they were like as children.”
Indeed, Alderton thanks two members of the younger generation, Sienna and Zadie, in her acknowledgments: “For the brilliant and weird things you say and do — for helping me remember how young minds work. I love you, and I love your mums for bringing you into my life. You can borrow all of my handbags.”
Alderton didn’t formally interview these girls — that’s not a cool auntie’s style — and Gen Alpha certainly isn’t the focus of her witty, tender story of a newly single comedian finding his footing among smug marrieds (as her literary forebear Helen Fielding might have called them). She rigs a tightrope across a familiar chasm, then dances across it with Philippe Petit-like grace: “I think particularly in the mid-30s, both sides are aware of the divide between people with young children and people without young children,” Alderton said. “We’re so aware of not burdening each other with each other’s lifestyles. I just thought it was kind of ripe for comedy.”
In addition to non-nauseating children, readers can expect a full cast of fully drawn bit players in “Good Material.” There’s the surly blue-haired clerk at the storage facility; the silver-tongued scammer with the leaky houseboat; and the 78-year-old conspiracy theorist roommate. (There’s also a wise mother who knows exactly when to cue up Frank Sinatra, but she’s in more of a supporting role, as parents tend to be.) “I love writing peripheral kooks,” Alderton said. “Everyone’s life is enriched by these hidden relationships, with people who make you think or challenge your preconceptions. They’re deeply enriching in a day-to-day human way, and in a story they diversify the ensemble.”
