Olivia Laing

Everybody essentially follows the same format as The Lonely City - part memoir and part biography woven together with cultural criticism - except here Laing focuses on bodily freedom and autonomy rather than art and loneliness.

I was reluctant to pick this up because (1) I was not thrilled with Funny Weather and (2) I never in a million years thought I would give a shit about the psychoanalysis angle of this book (Wilhelm Reich, Freud's protege, is the interconnecting link between each section). Topics of mental and physical illness, eugenics, feminism, gay liberation, rape, and abortion are discussed among many artists and activists but never with any judgement and in true Laing form, with subtle empathy.… (more)

It just didn't work for me, it wasn't what I wanted. The book spends a lot of time on four men who symbolize loneliness in different ways. Maybe this would have been interesting if I'd had an interest in any of them, but I didn't. The author did talk about her own encounter with loneliness, which was exactly what I was wanting, but too little of the book was given over to it. I had to concentrate intensely on each sentence to make a connection with it, and by page 75 my eyes were sliding down through the paragraphs, picking up a few sentences and not caring one way or another. This book was not for me.… (more)