Olivia Laing Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Crudo | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
The Abandoned Person's Tale | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
To the River | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Trip to Echo Spring | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Lonely City | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Funny Weather | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Everybody | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Garden Against Time | (2024) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Comma Singles Books
Fewer Things | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Skirt | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Hitting Trees with Sticks | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Crosswords | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
A Wolf | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Truth | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Sports Leader | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Earthquakes | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Tamagotchi | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Truck to Berlin | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Virgin and the Soldier | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Red Enters the Eye | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
An Industrial Evolution | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Cave | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Mr Carlton | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
A Paris Story | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Bicycle Express | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Flight into Egypt | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Abulafia | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Everything Is Moving, Everything Is Joined | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Pitch | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Morphogenesis | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Heart of Denis Noble | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
What Kind of Dog | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Crystal Night | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
My Soul to Keep | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Red Lights | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Many Years Ago, I Was Standing In A Meydan | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Jebel Moya | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The War of All Against All | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Easy on The Rose's | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Pardon List: A story from the Peasants' Revolt | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Mastiff: A story of The Diggers | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Heavy Clay Soil: A story from the Midlands Rising | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
A Fiery Flag Unfurled in Coleman Street: A story from Venner's Rising | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Trying Lydia: A story on the Luddites of Pentrich | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Banner Bright: A story on the Anti-Vietnam War Protests | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Kick-Start: A story on the National Blind March | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
For the Tape: A Story on the Aldermaston Marches | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
There Are Five Ways Out Of This Room: A Suffragette's Story | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Spun: A story of the Radical War | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Rivers of Blood: A story on the Anti-Rivers of Blood March | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
May Hobbs: A story on the Night Cleaners' Strike | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Stars are in the Sky: A story from Greenham Common | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Exterior Paint | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Beckhams are in Betty's | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Opposite of Drowning: A story on the Welsh Language Protests | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Never Going Underground: A story on Section 28 Protests | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Conrad Street | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Turd Tree: A story of Anti-Iraq War Demo | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Expectant Management | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Withen: A story from the Miners' Strike | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Bed 45: A story of the Brixton Riots | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Poison Tree | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Abandoned Person's Tale | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Gardens of Babylon | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Widening Gyre | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Kindling | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Sea-God | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Into Tiny Pieces | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Hare's Declaration | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Birds of Kipsala Island | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Bird of Paradise | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Slow Man | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Beginner's Guide to Smuggling | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Storyteller | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Return Ticket | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Child in the Lock | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Benzene Dreams | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
From Above | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Tank | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Biggest Bridge in the World | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Inertia | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Flypaper | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Dependant's Tale | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Testicular Cancer vs. the Behemoth | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Appellant's Tale | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Change for Low Rixham | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Lover's Tale | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Sayer of the Sooth | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Longhand Option | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Passing | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Living in Hope | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Oliver Laing is a British cultural critic, novelist, and writer best known for the novel “Crudo” that she published in 2018. Before she became a fiction author she had written several non-fiction works that included “The Lonely City,” “The Trip to Echo Spring,” and “To the River.” In 2018, she was the winner of the Literature nonfiction prize by Windham-Campbell. Her debut fiction work “Crudo was the winner of the 100th James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2019. Olivia was brought up in St. Peter, Buckinghamshire in Chalfont and went to Sussex University to study English. However, she did not finish as she became involved in social protests and started living wild in the Sussex countryside. Between 2007 and 2009, she worked at The Observer as a Deputy Books Editor. She was also a culture and art critic for several publications including New Statesman, Frieze, and The Guardian. Olivia has also written catalog essays for a variety of modern artists such as Andy Warhol, Derek Jarman, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Chantal Joffe.
Olivia Laing’s first novel was “To the River” which was a genre-crossing nonfiction book that was part history, part memoir, part nature writing, and part Virginia Woolf biography. “The Trip to Echo Spring” her second novel was an exploration of the muddy meeting point of alcoholism and creativity. “Lonely City” her third explored the relationship between four artists who have to deal with urban loneliness and positioned the author as the poster child for loneliness. The novel “Crudo” which was her first work of fiction made the shortlist for the 2018 Goldsmiths Prize. In the novel, she tells her story by combining two perspectives; one is that of Kathy Acker the experimental author while another is partially her own life. For instance, it tells of Laing getting married but is also a picture of Kathy getting married too. It also takes in the experience of Kathy’s marriage combined with the happenings of the summer of 2017 such as the dismissal of James Comey, the refugee crisis, the Charlottesville rally, and Donald Trump’s tweets among many others. Her collection of essays “Funny Weather” was published in 2020.
When Olivia Laing published “The Lonely City,” in 2016 it became a critically acclaimed work of contemporary nonfiction that set her on a path to becoming one of the most known British authors. It was during this time that broke up with her boyfriend and moved to New York from London where she became afraid of ending up a lonely old woman. Laing used the loneliness to try to understand the work of the likes of Josh Harris the pioneer of reality media, Zoe Leonard, Henry Darger, and David Wojnarowicz. It became a channel that she could use to get a better understanding of the world. After the publication of the award-winning novel, she thought she would publish another nonfiction work when the idea for Crudo came to mind. Olivia was reading Kathy Acker and this triggered in her a need to write something similar. Within seven weeks, she had the manuscript for her debut work of fiction. The novel is written in a picaresque, racy and bracing style in which she uses the third person character perspective. The result is a combination of the taste for transgression and emotional realism of Kathy Acker and Olivia’s experience in twenty-first-century Italy. Her experiences include plans for her wedding, checking updates on Twitter and vacations in Italy. Alternating between Laing’s life and the personal of Kathy Acker it is a compelling read. Olivia writes in real-time about the Grenfell Tower, Trump’s tweets, Brexit, Ivanka and Jared and the flooding of Houston among many other events.
“Crudo” by Olivia Laing is a story about an author named Kathy. It is set in the summer of 2017 where our protagonist believes her whole life is coming apart even though she is about to get married. Frantic and fast-paced, the novel happens in real-time and we get a full-throttle look into the thinking of commitment-phobic artist who the story suggests may be the realist author Kathy Acker. From a posh hotel in Tuscan to the United Kingdom where a recent referendum has left Britain paralyzed over Brexit, the lead spends much of the summer when she turned forty adjusting to the idea of a committed relationship. But it is not Kathy alone who is changing as the planet is heating up, truth is dying, fascism is gaining currency and Trump is making harebrained tweets that could lead to nuclear war. How is it possible for one to plan for the future when one tweet from the president could result in Armageddon? Olivia writes a novel with a compassionate and fierce account of how one can love even when it seems that there is no point given that the world is ending. It is a funny and brilliant novel of love in a world on the edge of a precipice.
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