Ghosts: a novel

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Average Rating
Publisher
Varies, see individual formats and editions
Publication Date
2021.
Language
English

Description

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Everything I Know About Love comes a smart, sexy, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy about ex-boyfriends, imperfect parents, friends with kids, and a man who disappears the moment he says "I love you."“An absolute knock-out. Wickedly funny and, at turns, both cynical and sincere… feels like your very favorite friend.” —Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Malibu RisingONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, VOGUE, PEOPLENina Dean is not especially bothered that she's single. She owns her own apartment, she's about to publish her second book, she has a great relationship with her ex-boyfriend, and enough friends to keep her social calendar full and her hangovers plentiful. And when she downloads a dating app, she does the seemingly impossible: She meets a great guy on her first date. Max is handsome and built like a lumberjack; he has floppy blond hair and a stable job. But more surprising than anything else, Nina and Max have chemistry. Their conversations are witty and ironic, they both hate sports, they dance together like fools, they happily dig deep into the nuances of crappy music, and they create an entire universe of private jokes and chemical bliss.But when Max ghosts her, Nina is forced to deal with everything she's been trying so hard to ignore: her father's dementia is getting worse, and so is her mother's denial of it; her editor hates her new book idea; and her best friend from childhood is icing her out. Funny, tender, and eminently, movingly relatable, Ghosts is a whip-smart tale of relationships and modern life.

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ISBN
9780593313978
9780593454503
9780593319864
9780593319857

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NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
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Though Ghosts is more upbeat than the bittersweet Adelaide, both touching relationship novels center on the sometimes fraught world of modern dating and star relatable young women who fall for men who won't commit. -- Halle Carlson
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Though Sorrow and Bliss is more melancholy than Ghosts, these novels star flawed but relatable women in their thirties who are trying to figure out what they want out of life. Both blend humor with more serious topics like dementia and mental illness. -- Halle Carlson
The highs and lows of online dating are explored as relatable women attempt to find love through an app in these funny and thoughtful relationship novels -- Halle Carlson
Relatable young women who live in London juggle their (sometimes) disappointing dating lives with their fledgling careers along with complicated family and friend dynamics in these touching and amusing novels. -- Halle Carlson
Relatable women deal with modern dating woes, including getting ghosted by a seemingly perfect guy in these charming novels. While both have elements of romantic comedy, they also focus on the individual characters' aspirations and interior lives. -- Halle Carlson

Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
Authors (and real-life friends) Caroline O'Donoghue and Dolly Alderton craft compelling and moving novels about young people navigating the often-murky world of modern dating, figuring out professional aspirations, and juggling a variety of platonic and romantic relationships with humor and insight. O'Donoghue also writes teen fantasy fiction; Alderton non-fiction. -- Halle Carlson
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These authors' works have the appeal factors reflective, and they have the genre "relationship fiction"; and the subjects "coping," "options, alternatives, choices," and "thirties (age)."
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Published Reviews

Booklist Review

Alderton's fiction debut delivers a refreshing and clever meditation on a single British woman's late coming-of-age. Thirtysomething Nina Dean, a food writer, joins the dating app Linx under the guidance of Lola, her terminally single but hilarious friend with a self-anointed "PhD in dating." When Nina matches with Max, they hit it off immediately and begin a whirlwind romance. After three blissful months, he professes his love to Nina but then falls off the face of the earth, ghosting her. Readers become coconspirators with Nina as she wryly parses modern dating and the very real, psychologically damaging phenomenon that is ghosting. Did she imagine the heartfelt "I love you"? The whole relationship? It would be a mistake to pigeonhole Ghosts as just a novel about dating, since Alderton thoughtfully explores the ever-present uncertainty haunting adulthood, including aging parents, changing friendships, and contemplating children and myriad "paths that lie ahead." Full of quirky characters, sardonic commentary, and millennial ruminations, Ghosts is for fans of the show Fleabag, Sally Rooney's Normal People (2020), and Lily King's Writers & Lovers (2021).

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

The sprightly, sometimes touching debut novel by British memoirist Alderton (Everything I Know About Love) follows a cookbook author through her life's "strangest year." Nina, 32, has bought a flat in London and is taking a break from men after amicably breaking up with her first boyfriend, Joe, who has since gotten engaged and with whom she remains friends. Now, with most of her friends married, having kids, and moving to the suburbs, she hits a dating app in search of love. She promptly meets Max, a 37-year-old surfer, "his eyes shining, his beard golden brown, his skin burnished from sunbeams." Things between them go swimmingly for months before he ghosts her, leaving her to cope with heartbreak, her beloved father's advancing dementia, her increasing estrangement from her friends, and her unnerving downstairs neighbor. Alderton doesn't exactly cover new ground as she moves through the obligatory scenes: an awkward weekend with Joe's fiancée and her friends, an uncomfortable wedding, difficult conversations with Nina's parents, and frustrating get-togethers with old friends. Still, this should hit the spot for readers of women's fiction who appreciate the familiar. (Aug.)

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Kirkus Book Review

A 32-year-old single woman in London copes with disappearances: Her married friends have been swallowed up by reproduction, her father is succumbing to dementia, and she's about to see what kinds of guys are on dating apps. Nina Dean is just returning to the fray of dating after a period of conscious singlehood following a long-term relationship. She's never been on a dating app and has never heard of "ghosting." Her only remaining single friend, a colorful character named Lola who's quite desperate to settle down, has to explain: " 'Number of schools of thought,' she said, with the command of an academic. 'Most commonly, it is thought to have come from the idea that you are haunted by someone who vanishes, you don't get any closure.' " The dread the reader feels for Nina upon reading this is borne out in spades by the pessimistic plot of this nonetheless amusing novel. A popular columnist and podcaster in Britain, Alderton tackles many of the same themes in her fiction debut that she addressed in her essay collection, Everything I Know About Love (2018). At the end of the day, the author's strengths are more those of an essayist than a novelist. Nina is a bit of an odd character--a food writer who doesn't seem to care much about food or writing--and the plot is fairly predictable except for a ferocious sex scene that seems to have fallen into this book from some other novel. These failings are outweighed by Alderton's funny formulations and essayistic insights: "Being a heterosexual woman who loved men meant being a translator for their emotions, a palliative nurse for their pride and a hostage negotiator for their egos." "I'd noticed this was a thing that people did when they got into their thirties: they saw every personal decision you made as a direct judgement on their life." Yes! Yes! Yes! (This is the sound of Alderton's millennial demographic, reading her book.) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Booklist Reviews

Alderton's fiction debut delivers a refreshing and clever meditation on a single British woman's late coming-of-age. Thirtysomething Nina Dean, a food writer, joins the dating app Linx under the guidance of Lola, her terminally single but hilarious friend with a self-anointed "PhD in dating." When Nina matches with Max, they hit it off immediately and begin a whirlwind romance. After three blissful months, he professes his love to Nina but then falls off the face of the earth, ghosting her. Readers become coconspirators with Nina as she wryly parses modern dating and the very real, psychologically damaging phenomenon that is ghosting. Did she imagine the heartfelt "I love you"? The whole relationship? It would be a mistake to pigeonhole Ghosts as just a novel about dating, since Alderton thoughtfully explores the ever-present uncertainty haunting adulthood, including aging parents, changing friendships, and contemplating children and myriad "paths that lie ahead." Full of quirky characters, sardonic commentary, and millennial ruminations, Ghosts is for fans of the show Fleabag, Sally Rooney's Normal People (2020), and Lily King's Writers & Lovers (2021). Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews

The sprightly, sometimes touching debut novel by British memoirist Alderton (Everything I Know About Love) follows a cookbook author through her life's "strangest year." Nina, 32, has bought a flat in London and is taking a break from men after amicably breaking up with her first boyfriend, Joe, who has since gotten engaged and with whom she remains friends. Now, with most of her friends married, having kids, and moving to the suburbs, she hits a dating app in search of love. She promptly meets Max, a 37-year-old surfer, "his eyes shining, his beard golden brown, his skin burnished from sunbeams." Things between them go swimmingly for months before he ghosts her, leaving her to cope with heartbreak, her beloved father's advancing dementia, her increasing estrangement from her friends, and her unnerving downstairs neighbor. Alderton doesn't exactly cover new ground as she moves through the obligatory scenes: an awkward weekend with Joe's fiancée and her friends, an uncomfortable wedding, difficult conversations with Nina's parents, and frustrating get-togethers with old friends. Still, this should hit the spot for readers of women's fiction who appreciate the familiar. (Aug.)

Copyright 2021 Publishers Weekly.

Copyright 2021 Publishers Weekly.
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