Sex, heartache, and nightmare landlords: why Dolly Alderton is the millennial Nora Ephron

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Dolly Alderton looks wistful on a doorstep
Dolly Alderton has produced an autobiography aged just 29 Credit: Joanna Bongard

Violet Hudson reviews the brilliant, courageously honest memoir by a young woman muddling through life

Readers picking up Dolly Alderton’s book may be reminded of the title of B S Johnson’s 1973 Aren’t You Rather Young to be Writing Your Memoirs? At just 29, Alderton has produced an autobiography – but there could be no finer time to do it. Everything I Know About Love (Fig Tree, £12.99) is not a book that could have lurked in a drawer for a decade: it’s about what it’s like to be young, and to be dating, right now. A former dating columnist, Alderton has form when it comes to writing about her personal life – and, as listeners of her chart-topping podcast The High Low will attest, she does it in sparkling style.

Everything I Know About Love is in the Nora Ephron, Melissa Banks and Caitlin Moran tradition of confessional women’s literature. Alderton brings this genre up to date with a millennial...

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