If one reads at some point that Dolly Alderton has written at the beginning of her career a few episodes of the scripted British reality television series "Made in Chelsea" about a pair of upperclass teens, their book suddenly makes sense.

So "sense", in the sense of: That's exactly how it reads. It's no coincidence that a page on page constantly the genre "cliché girl's TV Soap according to Scheme F" occurs and you would prefer to switch. "All I know about love" is Alderton's debut - and the "I" is she herself as a teenager and young woman: one who drinks too much; mad at her friend Farly, because she has a boyfriend now; Spending too much money she does not have; for nocturnal taxi rides into the country because of any types or food in fine restaurants and continue to drink too much. What you do as a student who is not studying, as a novice journalist in London, as a relationship columnist. And when 28-year-old writes a "memoir" about this scripted yawn. Essence: "Guys were a problem, a problem I needed fifteen years to solve."

A coming-of-age book of a nearly 30-year-old in 2018, one has then but, well, enlightened introduced. Without the fixed idea that one's own life is only fulfilled, if one has understood the matter with the "boys" and the love. And so you sit there wondering about the success of this book. After all, Alderton won the National Book Award last year. The only plausible explanation: the readers get exactly what they know. A book like a fast-scrolling Instagram stream of selfies, the effect of brushed life and the daily sayings, a bit of empowerment, a little mindfulness, a bit of wink.

Of course, the setting is reminiscent of Candace Bushnells around himself and then more and more circulating columns, which should be the series "Sex and the City". Only that this is not to be beat here in his dull boring banality.

DISPLAY

Dolly Alderton:
Everything I know about love

Friederike Achilles

KiWi Paperback; 336 pages; 15.00 euros.

Order at Amazon. Order from Thalia.

That's amazing for two reasons. This lack of ambition baffles and enrages because someone like Alderton can decide with her fanbase: Either she has something to say or not. A book of hers will sell anyway. She has made a clear choice. And at a time when women write books about being-self, they can serve as role models like Margarete Stokowksi or Laurie Penny, just to name two.

Only thin life knowledge

The other reason: Alderton does exactly that too. But elsewhere. In the podcast "High Low" she has been debating with her friend Pandora Sykes for two years about Nora Ephron films and cookbooks, about series like "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" - but also about the rape content of the Christmas song "Baby, it's cold outside ", racism in comedy, fair pay for freelancers.

In her "Memoir", on the other hand, there is only thin life knowledge, two pieces on the last few centimeters: That her relationships with her friends make up what she has not yet experienced in partnerships. And that in search of her lack of "self-esteem" she does not need dating apps or phone numbers of toxic types, motto: "I do not have to run away from my own discomfort and into a male field of vision." Because: "I am enough, my heart is enough, the stories and sentences that are in my head are enough," this goes on for another paragraph of dripping Instagram proverbs, ending with: "I am mine own universe, a galaxy, a solar system, I'm the opening act, the headliner and the background singer. " Heieieieiei. OK. You're welcome. And that requires 330 pages?

Free house at this point, therefore, the only hefty sentence in the entire book: "Volunteer in a damned women's home, if you want to feel useful, do not waste hours discussing the political role of your pubic hair." And, sure, better not to read this book.