Dolly Alderton

Dolly Alderton is the author and first person narrator of Everything I Know About Love. At the outset of the text, Alderton is a teenager struggling to navigate the banality of suburbia. She and her best friend, Farly, use MSN Instant Messenger to talk with boys. The author believes that romantic relationships are “the most important and exciting thing in the entire world” (1). After she drinks for the first time, as a ten year old at Natasha Bratt’s bat mitzvah, Alderton begins to use alcohol as a tool to escape the misery of her teenage years and establish a sense of independence. She believes that drinking will differentiate her from her peers and allow her to gain a sense of autonomy. At university, the author binge drinks and sleeps around to escape her self-hatred and accumulate experiences for her writing. While alcohol initially feels liberating...