Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

11 reviews

alyssapusateri's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

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

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

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

owenwilsonbaby's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

“God I was sick of carrying around a woman’s body, or rather everything that attaches to it.”

Wow! My copy is dog-eared from the countless quotes I wanted to remember and include here. What a beautiful and articulate piece of writing about analysing and challenging loneliness and what a delicate and finely-wrought talent for storytelling. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body shaming, Injury/Injury detail, Addiction, Drug abuse, Rape, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Stalking, Abandonment, Child abuse, Cursing, Grief, Homophobia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Alcohol, Blood, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Forced institutionalization, Hate crime, Medical content, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, and Violence

tiagoalves's review

informative reflective medium-paced

1.25

This book started well, fizzled out in the blink of an eye, and then ended horribly.

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.

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Content Warnings

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

hrsblue's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Violence, and Drug abuse

clarabooksit's review against another edition

I’ve been ruminating on language, its fluidity and possibilities. How magnificent and frustrating is it that words can mean so many different things? 

 

Which brings me to this book: THE LONELY CITY: ADVENTURES IN THE ART OF BEING ALONE by Olivia Laing. I picked it up because of its title. It’s a fantastic title. 

 

I thought it was going to be a collection of essays about loneliness, primarily the author’s own, and the myriad ways that it transpires and affects our lives. I thought the focal point was going to be New York City as one of the most populous cities in the world and also one of the loneliest. I thought there was going to be adventure, nuance, well-crafted sentences and poignancy. 

 

What I did not expect was that the operative word in the title was “art.” 

 

This book is about lonely (white, male) artists who lived in NYC. (I didn’t finish the book, so it’s possible there’s diversity somewhere in it but I wouldn’t bet on it.)

 

While some of my expectations were sort of met—nuance, poignancy, a great deal of loneliness—I find myself disappointed. Is this my own fault? Entirely. But that title set up so much and my interpretation was all wrong. 

 

Does that make this a bad book? No, of course not. Does it make it not for me? Mostly yes. This might be callous but misunderstood male artists are not my thing. (And they’re nearly all male—the few women are defined by their relationships to said male artists.)

 

This is well-crafted—Laing weaves history, art, biography and social critique beautifully—and if you’re interested in the art world, particularly the latter half of the 20th century in the U.S., this might be for you.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Sexism, Misogyny, and Addiction

Moderate: Gun violence, Violence, Rape, Sexual violence, and Bullying

maureen's review against another edition

informative reflective sad medium-paced

2.75

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Content Warnings

Minor: Addiction, Mental illness, Homophobia, Gun violence, Drug use, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, and Chronic illness

grtwrrn's review

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

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 against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

olivia laing really dragged out some of my deepest, most shameful thoughts and displayed them all out here in her book, huh? reading this was unexpectedly comforting at times because, idk, misery loves company i guess. there's really something about having someone put your thoughts and emotions into such eloquent words. at the same time though, i'd caution everyone to really evaluate your current state of mind first before you dive into this book. it's extremely visceral, and there were times when i had to stop reading because it was just too much. reading this book about loneliness during one of the loneliest periods of human existence in the past few years isn't something to be taken lightly. this book was incredible but, idk, just really think about whether you can handle it or not before you start reading it. 

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Content Warnings

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

tasho's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I really enjoyed this book. I thought the premise of connecting loneliness to depictions in art would be pretentious and wishy-washy, but it’s actually deeply insightful. Olivia discusses connections to feelings of loneliness and social isolation to class, identity, mental illness, upbringing, into ways that I found fascinating but also quite sad. It gave me great perspective into the art scene as well as lived experiences of the lower class and what barriers are enforced between us by the structures of classism, capitalism and gentrification. Strongly recommend.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Homophobia, and Sexual content

Moderate: Sexual violence and Mental illness

Minor: Death