Someone asked me if I liked this book. I loved this book. It was heartbreaking and sad and hilarious all at the same time. 

Quotes: 
“Because people don’t break up with people who they’ve had absolutely no prior problems with just so they can be single. No one likes being single that much.” “I’d like to be single,” Jane replies. “I think most women would. It’s men who don’t know how to do it."

this other time zone of a young family.

“Why didn’t you talk about Jen tonight?” he asks. “I don’t do that kind of soul-baring stuff on stage,” I reply. “That’s not my sort of comedy.” “Yeah, I know that, but I’m wondering whether this could be your chance to create your opus. Venture away from all that”— he puts on a miscellaneous Midlands accent—“ ‘Have you noticed this funny thing about sausage rolls?’ sort of vibe.” “I don’t do that vibe.” “Didn’t you make a joke about sausage rolls tonight? I thought you did.” “I think what you’re referring to is the bit about a panini, not a sausage roll. About how the tomato in it is always weirdly hotter than any other ingredient. That always gets the biggest laugh from the audience.” “People really are morons.” “Thanks.”

“I’ve got a whole weekend planned.” He shrugs defensively. “Oh yeah, like what?” “Like…tomorrow. When we’re hung-over. I’ve checked if the local KFC delivers on Uber Eats.” “And?” I demand. “They do.”

How could I have let myself believe, even for a second, that single thirty-something life would be an endless buffet of opportunities, when I know it is, at best, small plates.

“When men and women break up, men hate everything about their ex-girlfriend for three months, and then they miss her, and then they think they love her, and that’s when they text her.

even though Jen is no longer in my physical life—the room inside my mind that has been occupied by her for the last four years still exists. I want to convert it into a home gym or a meditation room or get in a new tenant, but I can’t.

“And no one is going to be with you because of the label in your waistband.”

“Pleased to have realized early on in my life that you can trust nobody. Rely on nobody. When someone tells you something, don’t believe them. When something is given to you as a fact, ask yourself whether it really is a fact. Everybody is out for themselves in this life. Everyone. And that’s how it should be. I should be out for myself,” he says, pointing at himself, his voice low and hushed now. “And you should be out for yourself.” He points to me. “And we all should be out for ourselves.” He gestures around the pub.

I needed an answer more than anything that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a realization that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I realized the feeling I was experiencing was not anger or jealousy or bitterness—it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t really gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had disappeared and there was nothing they could do to change that. Unless I joined them in their spaces, on their schedules

I once heard a theory about the first relationship that occurs after a big relationship ends. It’s called the 90/10 rule. The theory goes: whatever the crucial 10 per cent is that was missing from your partner who was otherwise totally right for you is the thing you look for in the following person. That missing 10 per cent becomes such a fixation that, when you do find someone who has it, you ignore the fact they don’t have the other 90 per cent that the previous partner had.

Which is how I ended up on Andy’s Spotify page, discovering that he’d made a Spotify playlist titled “S” and that one of the songs on that playlist was “Cigarettes and Coffee” by Otis Redding. A song that soundtracked nearly four years of our relationship, repurposed for a twenty-three-year-old who he’d met a handful of weeks ago. That was when I really started going mad. I couldn’t stop imagining how they were together: whether he made her weekly mixes like he did for me at the beginning; whether he kissed her armpit the first morning he woke up with her. Was the way Andy loved me actually nothing to do with me, and instead just the Andy Experience a woman gets when he chooses her?

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My short summary, if Fleabag was a book, this is it. Every Dolly Alderton book I've read (check my profile), I've given 5 stars. I love the way she writes, is it a British thing? You can be so flippant and witty and wry, and then be so heartbroken and sad the next page.