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Reviews tagging 'Drug use'
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing
11 reviews
alyssapusateri's review against another edition
3.5
Moderate: Death, Abandonment, Addiction, Sexual violence, Homophobia, Domestic abuse, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Chronic illness, Drug abuse, and Drug use
Minor: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Stalking, Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Pedophilia
effievee's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Chronic illness, Mental illness, Gun violence, Violence, Drug use, Terminal illness, Injury/Injury detail, Drug abuse, Grief, Medical content, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Medical trauma, Pedophilia, and Sexual violence
Moderate: Addiction, Alcohol, Rape, Racial slurs, Self harm, Alcoholism, Racism, and Classism
klor's review
3.75
Graphic: Death, Drug use, and Sexual assault
tiagoalves's review against another edition
1.25
The blurb, that I read a few years ago, drew me in. Its first chapter, describing loneliness as a city in itself and beginning to explore that feeling in a city as born out of separation but also exposure was fantastic. Then Laing went into the biographical content that mostly built this book, rather than the memoir I was expecting alongside the study of loneliness in art.
We learn about the lives of Hopper, Warhol, Wojnarowicz, Solanas, Darger, and so on, but what we read is all very surface-level. It goes on interminable tangents that don’t seem to relate at all with the main point the book promises us, only then to fail miserably in considering the many nuances of loneliness, cowering solely behind the word ‘lonely’ and never having the boldness to explore anything else for over 250 pages.
This was researched, but the thing is that you can tell it was researched, and not in a good way. It reads as if Laing had googled ‘lonely’ and ‘new york’ and created an amalgamation of the results and divided them into chapters. The art analysis is paradoxically shallow and generic, while also being over-explained and too drawn out.
The problem is that Laing seems to promise to set out in one direction through the main road, but she chooses to go someplace else and uses a shortcut. She pours over an artist’s life for over 30 pages and then suddenly remembers “oh right, I have to relate this to loneliness and to me somehow” so she decides to say “this is why he was lonely and this is the same way I felt a few years after in the same street where he was once” and then dips. These short allusions to loneliness and to her own experience quickly started to feel like a cop out from actually reflecting on loneliness by herself—she resorted a bit too much to quotes from her sources and ended up not sharing much more than her generic, vague, and not too bound opinions.
Shout out to chapter six, which dealt with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, for being the best chapter in the book, but it couldn’t save this book.
Graphic: Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Terminal illness, Sexual violence, Gun violence, Violence, Addiction, Alcoholism, Blood, Child abuse, Confinement, and Drug abuse
Moderate: Suicide attempt, Domestic abuse, Rape, Bullying, and Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Abandonment
aviruri's review
4.25
Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city. As to how to inhabit it, there are no rules and nor is there any need to feel shame, only to remember that the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each another. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity.
Graphic: Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Violence, Sexual violence, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Abandonment, Addiction, and Alcoholism
maureen's review
2.75
Minor: Addiction, Mental illness, Homophobia, Gun violence, Drug use, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, and Chronic illness
grtwrrn's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Terminal illness, Sexual violence, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Religious bigotry, Rape, Physical abuse, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Hate crime, and Homophobia
aidrielle's review
5.0
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Grief, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, and Violence
kelsea's review
3.5
Minor: Sexual assault, Drug use, and Homophobia
julied's review
3.0
Moderate: Drug use, Emotional abuse, Grief, Gun violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Rape, and Sexual content
Minor: Addiction