I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy this book, but it was excellent. A really good Yom Kippur read, all about the constant struggle to connect, the inevitable pain and damage of failing to be understood, the beauty of trying anyway, the healing power of art, and the universality of decline, death, and grief. IDK I'm not a writer, Laing is though. I highlighted so many passages that I want to return to. Highly recommend. ( )

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.

Being alone may of may not mean being lonely. Feeling lonely doesn't necessarily mean we are alone. Laing explores all of this. ( )

I did not expect to enjoy this book; it seemed a depressing choice for this time of year. Olivia Laing writes about her sense of loneliness in New York by examining the work of (mostly) New York artists, writers and musicians whose work and lives have been informed by a sense of isolation and aloneness.

Some of her subjects are well-known; the work of Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol are familiar to most, but the likes of David Wojnarowicz and Henry Darger were completely new to me. Laing is clearly enamoured with the political art of Wojnarowicz, but I found Darger's life story and work wholly fascinating and bizarre, and the great find of reading this book. I still don't know what to make of him and his paintings of cherubic children being tortured by evil aliens.

This leads me to the key weakness I found in this book. Laing goes into great detail describing pictures or photos, but leaves the reader to imagine what she is talking about, or go scurrying to Google to find the piece that she's discussing. This book would have been a whole lot better with some plates showing the works that she is dissecting. Other than that, a really absorbing and fascinating read. ( )

I've been reading this over the course of three years which is some kind of a personal record. This is definitely the kind of book that calls for a certain mood, at least for me.

I made some notes on the first couple of chapters when I first started reading this in 2018, and at the time I enjoyed Olivia's personal accounts of her own experience a lot more than the deep dives into the different artists. I especially disliked Hopper. However, now that I read the last handful of chapters at the beginning of 2021, the tables had turned. Or maybe it just so happened that the artists were much more to my liking.

Whatever the case may be, what began as a pretty lackluster experience, ended on a much more positive note. The accounts were interesting and pulled me in, and I actually even teared up a little at one point.

This is a pretty sharp look at loneliness and all it brings with it. There were times where I felt annoyed or agitated because the observations were less than flattering, but still so spot on. Kind of forces you to accept some uncomfortable truths. ( )