Jenna Bush Hager has selected Dolly Alderton’s Good Material as the February pick for her popular Today show book club, Read With Jenna.
Alderton’s novel, slated for publication Tuesday by Knopf, follows Andy, an aspiring stand-up comedian who can’t understand why his ex-girlfriend, Jen, doesn’t want to be with him anymore. A reviewer for Kirkus praised Alderton’s “talent for depicting love, flaws and all,” calling the book “an easy read for those with a soft spot for the hopelessly doomed romantic.”
Hager announced her latest pick on the Today show, saying, “February is love month, right? So we have a rom-com.…I love this book so much. It is a fresh, comedic, funny love story, and it starts at the end of a love, which is kind of different.”
She added, “A lot of romantic comedies can feel clichéd. Not this one.”
In an interview with Today.com, Alderton said, “In my early 30s, I experienced a strange sort of adolescent heartbreak that inspired the first ideas for Good Material. In writing the book, I took one of the worst years of my life for lots of different reasons—heartbreak, the isolation of the pandemic—and I made something funny out of it. Even though it’s the most fictional thing I’ve written, the pain it came from was one of the most real experiences of my life. In a way, it’s the most intimate book I’ve written.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
