Sunday book pick: A forensic report of urban loneliness in Olivia Laing’s ‘The Lonely City’

How often have we heard the lament that cities are designed to be lonely? Streets and neighbourhoods are gentrified to serve a certain section of the population and we mingle with those who belong to similar economic and social classes as us. Those who are different – the desperately poor or obscenely rich – are relegated to the margins: we have nothing to do with these lives. Furthermore, we are ensconced inside our screens where we can say a lot without actually speaking. The many levels of dissociation can be terrifying, especially when there’s no recourse in sight.

Olivia Laing’s landmark work The Lonely City: The Adventures in the Art of Being Lonely, published in 2016, is a forensic report of crippling urban loneliness. This was a time when social media had started to gain strength as an alternative to real human connection and self-worth was being counted in likes, reshares, and comments. For Laing, loneliness is a state that is “difficult to confess” – the simulacrum of online validation does not make it any easier to admit that one is starved for actual human connection. Loneliness is taboo while solitude is sought after, still, it is not a “wholly worthless” experience as Laing...

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