I hadn’t done a book review – or a post here actually – in quite some time, so I thought it was time to say hey, I’m still there. This book was lent to me by a friend because she thought I would like it, and let me tell you she was absolutely right: I loved it.
Full title: The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of being Alone
Author: Olivia Laing
Publication: March 2016
Genre: Non Fiction, Art, Memoir
My rating: ★★★★★
What this book is about:
In The Lonely City, Olivia Laing talks about her experience living in New York, about being alone and feeling lonely, about how social media can make you feel alive, and even more imortantly, about the lives of many artists – including Andy Warhol – who lived and struggled in New York.
Why I loved it so much:
What I really love about big cities (I’m thinking about Paris and Berlin, because I have lived there, and the situation can compare to New York in many aspects), is how you can be anonymous when you move there. I don’t mind being alone, I sometimes love it, and I love feeling that the city belongs to me in many aspects. And this is something I found in this book and could relate to. A city like New York is full of opportunities, but also full of loneliness and lonely people, and I believe Olivia Laing perfectly caputured this in her book.
Another reason I really loved this book is that I learnt a lot about various artists, including Warhol, Solanas and Wojnarowicz. Some artists I had never heard of, some I had, and all had something fascinating to tell through this book. Laing chose to talk about artists who suffered of social exclusion because of various affects of their lives (poverty, AIDS, mental illness among those reasons) and she does it in a very fascinating and beautiful way. Every chapter deals with differents artists and different aspects of loneliness, and reasing this book is a wonderful journey.
And finally, something else I can’t not mention when talking about this book, because it was probably the most relatable aspect of it: Laing’s relationship to social media. In several occurences, she mentioned how important it is in her life, and how she could spend days only talking to people online. She makes the internet feel like home, and she shows how social media can help in situations of loneliness, and this is honestly the kind of talk I live for. I grew up with parents and professors telling me how bad and dangerous the Internet was, and how social media should be avoided. But I have met many amazing people online, I have found a platform to express myself, and just like Laing, I could spend days not going out and only talking to people online. Social media can have a very big impact in the lives of introverts (and other people) and I believe this is something we could talk about more, so thank you Olivia Laing for that aspect and every other aspect of The Lonely City.
*
This review grew a lot more personal than I thought it would be, but thank you for reading if you came this far! I can only recommend this book, it was absolutely fantastic, and definitely one of my favourite reads this year.
