The Lonely City by Olivia Laing is a poignant and beautiful recounting of the lives of artists in New York. I can't explain the way the writing effected me but it was magnificent and I really enjoyed it.

A brilliantly researched and deeply personal account of how loneliness shapes the work and world of the author, and a network of kindred-spirit artists, including Hopper and Warhol. I found the conceit hinging the book on a 'map of loneliness ' particularly affecting.

I feel like the whole world RAVED over this book, and I was so excited about it - it sounded like my kinda thing, and the cover is GORGEOUS. But it really disappointed me, I couldn't even finish it. The prose is very heavy and it feels overdone, and I didn't find the subjects engaging enough to slog through that kind of writing.

An interesting mediation on the loneliness of the city - looking at both her own life and that of famous celebrities such as Andy Warhol. I would have preferred more personal details though.

The premise of The Lonely City centres around a time in Olivia Laing’s life when she finds herself alone in New York after a bad break-up, having moved from the UK to be with her American boyfriend. Despite being surrounded by millions of people, loneliness in the city can be at its most acute.

“The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden light. Inside, strangers swim to and fro, attending to the business of their private hours. You can see them, but you can’t reach them, and so this commonplace urban phenomenon, available in any city of the world on any night, conveys to even the most social a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure” (Quote source: Goodreads)

Laing explores her own state of intense loneliness by reporting on the lives of iconic artists who also experienced ‘the lonely city’, from Edward Hopper to Andy Warhol. I was most interested in Edward Hopper, and reading this book led me to Google him to see the paintings which Laing describes.

But I wasn’t compelled by all of her artist subjects; I started skimming through the chapters on David Wojnarowicz and Henry Darger. I confess I hadn’t heard of these two artists before opening the book, and their art does not appeal to me. In fact, I found aspects of it grotesque and disturbing.

The book didn’t match up to my expectations. I was hoping for a much deeper exploration of this period of the author’s life, but her reflections on her own experience in ‘the lonely city’ are relatively concise compared to the lengthy elaborations on the artists and their lives. It feels, as another reviewer said, as though Laing is keeping back some aspects of her own experience.

Laing’s writing is well-constructed, and I enjoyed aspects of the way she interweaves autobiography and biography together, digressing at times to talk about various psychological experiments on loneliness and attachment (notably, the rhesus monkey studies carried out in the 1970s by Harry Harlow). The Lonely City isn’t a bad book; it just didn’t compel me all the way through. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I was interested in all of the artists Laing writes about.

We are introduced to the writer of this unusual memoir as being a young woman, leaving England to live in New York with her boyfriend.
But as the title indicates Olivia finds herself on her own in an unknown city and increasingly finding loneliness seeping into her every day activities.
Wandering the bustling streets Olivia finds her mind travelling to art galleries and through her lap top to American artists who have themselves been linked with loneliness in their work. I was familiar with some of the more well known artists such as Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper and thorough analysis of their lives and paintings were revealing. It got me searching out the pictures of the various artists and looking more deeply into those that were new to me. As Olivia discusses more less well known artists she widens her discussion to other topics particularly from the 1980s when a lot of their work was being undertaken.
But this book is not an art history reference source but takes us into the worlds of psychology, feminism, explicit sex and often violence.
Sometimes the chapters which begin with a photograph of the main artist being discussed started to divert to all sorts of ideas and explanations.
Above all what begins with the links of the author to her loneliness start to dwindle. This is a shame because I was left wanting to know more about how Olivia dealt with life more generally as often we are only given small hints which are left in the air such as "I went back to England briefly".
However as a wide ranging book about the artistic community of New York, major issues (the shooting of Warhol, AIDS) it gives some interesting viewpoints. Olivia was given funding to do some further intensive research which was very thorough.
Although I learnt a lot, much of which was new to me- I did feel I would have liked to learn so much more about Olivia herself.

It took me some time to read this simply because I found it riveting, beautifully written, and I wanted to savour it. Olivia Laing is a British writer and critic who moved to New York to be with her American partner only to find the relationship disintegrating. She falls prey to a crippling loneliness which gives rise to this hybrid memoir, and art history on the theme of loneliness; and how she finds an alleviation of her loneliness through the visual arts. Given her family history, she focuses primarily on LGBT artists from New York's East Village with the exception of the odd Henry Darger from Chicago. She knits together a profound, moving and multilayered narrative. It covers her life, the work and lives of the artists, psychological insights and speculation, the state of being lonely specifically in a urban setting and a picture of New York through her eyes.

She looks primarily at four artists whom she is particularly drawn to. Edward Hopper whose work epitomises urban loneliness as exemplified through his most famous work Nighthawks, Andy Warhol whose life was spent hiding his sense of being apart through his entourages and equipment and the hoarded art of Henry Darger depicting the bizarre and the strange amidst a life of disintegration, violence and mental illness. Laing's particular favourite is David Wojnarowicz who experienced a particularly brutal childhood and life spent suffering as the eternal outsider. He was gay and contracted Aids. He channelled his rage at being stigmatised and silenced, by a punitive rather than compassionate society, by connecting with the group Act Up, to counter his loneliness until his death. His art and personal response is political to the cards life dealt him, he equates silence with death. His openness about his fear, pain, failure and grief has an honesty that allows him both to be vibrantly alive and counters loneliness.

The author looks at technology and its potent ability to connect whilst at the same time draws our attention to the solitary figure addicted to their phone and computer with its contradictory picture of the illusion of connection. There is the frustrations of social media, incessant social pressures, of people under constant surveillance and being judged rather than understood. The sense of loneliness is being compounded in our world today, with its shame and fear giving rise rise to concealment of the condition and carries heavy costs to public health.

Laing writes with empathy, humanity and curiosity pulling together disparate pieces of knowledge in her quest to understand and address loneliness. It raises as many questions as it answers. I did not always agree with the author but I did find the book intensely thought provoking and marvelled at its wide subject matter. I particularly engaged when near the end Laing says that amidst the shine 'of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feelings - depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage - are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice..' She leaves us by saying 'Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city'. Laing finds her own answers but prescribes no universal panacea whilst lauding the values of kindness and solidarity. A highly recommended book which I loved reading. Thanks to Canongate for an ARC.

The Lonely City is a fluid book, part memoir on loneliness in New York, part history of art and certain artists in the later 20th century, and part exposition on how being alone and being different has affected different kinds of art. The witty subtitle, ‘adventures in the art of being alone,’ summarises the reading experience: it is an adventure, not always a happy one, through art and loneliness and the sometimes harsh environment of the city.

The title initially drew me to the book, which I didn’t realise was about art and the lives of artists in New York as well as about loneliness in a big city. As someone who knows extremely little about art, I found it easily engaging and a fascinating look at artists of varying levels of general fame. Chapters focus around elements of her own time in New York and a specific artist and their work and history, but later chapters bring together aspects of previous ones to form the larger picture. From Warhol to various artists working in photography, music, and other media, the way in which Laing draws lines between art, loneliness and New York, particularly in relation to the AIDS crisis and LGBT communities, is deeply interesting and moving. Gender and sexuality play an important part throughout the book, which I did not expect from the blurb but was pleasantly surprised to find.

The kinds of loneliness on display in art and in life, being physically isolated and emotionally alone and socially outcast to name a few, are discussed to show that the concept of ‘the lonely city’ is not a simple one. Ultimately, Laing focuses on positivity that can come from looking at loneliness as well as on great pieces of art in different forms. The way in which The Lonely City blends ideas of loneliness, self, and art, not rigidly in one genre or focus, makes it a versatile and engaging read for anyone interested in social issues, art, LGBT history, or how cities can shape the people and work within them.