The Lonely City
Book description
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism
#1 Book of the Year from Brain Pickings
Named a best book of the year by NPR, Newsweek, Slate, Pop Sugar, Marie Claire, Elle, Publishers Weekly, and Lit Hub
A dazzling work of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism on the…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Lonely City as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I actually forgot the title of this essay collection and for the longest time I was kicking myself, truly beating my head against a wall trying to remember what it was. Thanks to this feature, I was able to! Olivia Laing is amazing in her ability to tap into vulnerabilities with an uncanny sense of ease and in The Lonely City, she focuses on urban isolation and loneliness, something to which most creatives living in a big city can relate. After reading this one, you’ll walk a city block looking not at what the streets have in store for…
From Michael's list on the destruction of personal space.
Having been abandoned in New York City by her new lover, Laing works through her grief by contemplating the nature of loneliness.
“Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism,” she writes, “we are fed the notion that all difficult feeling—depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage—are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to… doing time… in a rented body, with all the attendant grief and frustration that entails.”
Yes. That. So very much that. With its combination of personal story and existential analysis, The Lonely City is a delicious meal for our…
From Hillary's list on deliciously out-of-the-box memoirs by women.
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