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Olivia Laing: homeless and tempest-tossed in the Big Apple

In this remarkable combination of memoir and art criticism, Laing finds relief from crippling loneliness among the artists of New York’s East Village

12 March 2016

9:00 AM

12 March 2016

9:00 AM

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

Canongate, pp.315, £16.99, ISBN: 9781782111238

Like a lot of people, Olivia Laing came to New York to join a lover. Like a lot of people, she soon became unjoined. She stopped eating and drifted, moved from sublet to sublet, wandered the streets in a desperate daze. She craved intimacy and shied away from it, was painfully self-conscious but also anxious that she was in danger of vanishing.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £16.99 Tel: 08430 600033. Sukhdev Sandhu is the author of Night Haunts: a Journey through the London Night.

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