Lonely City (Laing) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Olivia Laing, in her new book, The Lonely City, picks up the topic of painful urban isolation and sets it down in many smart and oddly consoling places. She makes the topic her own.... Perhaps the best praise I can give this book is to concur with Ms. Laing’s dedication: "If you’re lonely, this one’s for you."
Dwight Garner - New York Times


This book serves as both provocation and comfort, a secular prayer for those who are alone―meaning all of us.
Ada Calhoun - New York Times Book Review


[Laing] is a brave writer whose books, in their different ways, open up fundamental questions about life and art…. What’s startling is that her book succeeds in offering its readers a redemptive experience comparable to the one she’s describing. Reading it at a lonely moment, I found that I responded easily to the confident muscularity of her prose and the intimate way she described emotional states. I became swiftly less lonely as I did so, earthed by the company of Wojnarowicz, Warhol and Laing herself….This triumphant book is in part an appeal for us to value the kind of loneliness that can be rendered, by the intimacy of art, both tolerable and shareable.
Daily Telegraph (UK)


[A] lovely thing. Exceptionally skillful at changing gears, Ms. Laing moves fluently between memoir, biography (not just of her principal cast but of a large supporting one), art criticism and the fruits of her immersion in "loneliness studies."... She writes about Darger and the rest with insight and empathy and about herself with a refreshing lack of exhibitionism.…every page of The Lonely City exudes a disarming, deep-down fondness for humanity.
Wall Street Journal


Laing, who used group biography to examine the connections between alcoholism and literature in The Trip to Echo Spring, here performs an almost magical trick: Reminding us of how it feels to be lonely, this book gently affirms our connectedness.
Boston Globe


An uncommonly observant hybrid of memoir, history and cultural criticism... [A] book of extraordinary compassion and insight.
San Francisco Chronicle


Laing is an astute and consistently surprising culture critic who deeply identifies with her subjects' vulnerabilities... absolutely one of a kind.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR's Fresh Air


It's not easy to pull off switching between criticism and confession―and like Echo Spring, The Lonely City is an impressive and beguiling combination of autobiography and biography, a balancing act that Laing effortlessly performs. Her gift as a critic is her ability to imaginatively sympathize with her subject in a way that allows the art and life of the artist to go on radiating meaning after the book is closed.
Elle


One of the finest writers of the new non-fiction...compelling and original.
Harper's Bazaar


Laing is always circling back toward a piercingly relevant observation. And, oh, those observations! ... Laing is a great critic, not least because she understands that art can and often does manifest multiple conflicting meanings and desires at once.
Laura Miller - Slate


[An] acute, nervy and personal investigation into urban solitude….[Laing] writes with lyrical clarity, empathy, and a knack for taking a wandering, edgy path, stretching themes (and genres), while never losing an underlying urgency…. A group biography all in one, which takes a difficult, almost taboo, subject and deftly turns it over anew.
New Statesman


By focusing on four artists…Laing’s writing becomes expansive, exploring their biographies, sharing art analysis, and weaving in observations.... She invents new ways to consider how isolation plays into art or even the Internet.... For once, loneliness becomes a place worth lingering.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [An] imaginative and poignant quest….Through her ardent research, empathetic response, original thought, courageous candor, and exquisite language, Laing [is one of the authors] transforming memoir into a daring and dynamic literary form of discovery.
Booklist


[An] absorbing melding of memoir, biography, art essay, and philosophical meditation...[An] illuminating, enriching book.
Kirkus Reviews