Loneliness is a feeling familiar to anyonewho finds themselves adrift in an unfamiliar city, surrounded by unrecognized people.

Butin her new book, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (Picador, $26), the British writer Olivia Laing wonders if loneliness is also a physical space. She quotes the Beach Boys singer Dennis Wilson: “Loneliness is a very special place.”

The Lonely City is an investigation of the sites and sensations that attend the isolated person. In it, Laing interweaves the events of her own life with meditations on the lives and works of artists, among them Andy Warhol, Henry Darger, David Wojnarowicz, and David Hopper. The character of loneliness itself emerges as a strikingly visual entity, but one that takes on many forms.

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