By Dolly Alderton
This is a memoir.
There were many times, when I was flabbergasted by the feelings portrayed by Dolly.
This book has sections as the cover of the book suggests – parties, dates, friends, jobs, life and finally love.
Dolly shares her 20s life in all of the above aspects, and how she grew as a person.
The parties
I can’t believe what I was reading whenever I come to this section. In simple words, she partied hard. She had a lot of fun in her high school and her college after spending her life in the all girls middle school. She did everything a partying person is supposed to do. She drinks like there is nothing left for tomorrow. Some of her drinking adventures are truly humorous and entertaining.
But later, as she grows, she realizes;
You have to choose which you’d rather be: the woman who parties harder than anyone else or the woman who works harder than anyone else. I decided to strive for the latter.
This all takes a major turn when she realizes that she doesn’t remember most of the conversations she has with her friends during drunken nights. But, I really wonder how she was able to write chapters in a book, especially hangover stories with such details.
Friends and Dates
I feel stories of her friends and her dates overlap in some aspects. It is very common to make mistakes while dating, and most of the times it is not because of incompatibility, rather it would be a mere lack of understanding. Dolly went through her break-ups in a very harsh manner, in one of which she developed an eating disorder. The way she explains how everyone reacts so differently for different scenarios of their life transforms the perspective. We can never truly understand what the other goes through clearly, but just try to support them the most we can.
There is so much she says I can’t possibly point them all and put forward what I felt through each of them. The plight of her best friend’s sister is truly heart warming. Times like these teach us that, everything will come to an end one day, be it a good one or a bad one. Whether we like it or not, it will have its time and that’s all there is to it.
The life and the love
Life is everything, especially in 20s, there is not a group of things we can point to and say, hey look, this is life. It is this now, and something later and life teaches us every moment that what we think, see and feel is just true to this moment and may not be the next.
Years later, I would discover that constantly behaving in a way that makes you feel shameful means you simply will not be able to take yourself seriously and your self-esteem will plummet lower and lower.
These words are true and there is always a hard way to understand and appreciate this.
I am right now in my 20s and I can’t imagine what tomorrow would be like. It is new and it is always new. Things are changing everyday and people around me are growing everyday. It is very hard to hold on to something and expect to reach the shore safe, when you don’t know what are you swimming in.
This memoir was very thought provocative, though I had a very less opinion of it when I started reading it. I guess, that’s how it was supposed to be.
Ending with another favorite quote from the book,
I am my own universe, a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event and the backing singers.
Rating: 4.5/5
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