Every Female Body (Review of Audible version)

Amazing work, as ever by Olivia Laing. She writes such interesting essays which all connect, weaving together people and subject matter. Every book of hers I've read has left me with names and places I want to research and find out more about - and a desire for her next to come along quickly.

The narration is good, just not great. I would listen to something else read by Emily Pennant-Rea, but I wouldn't search her out particularly.

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1 person found this helpful

Superb and compelling

Superb, thought provoking compelling. Well read. As soon as it was finished I wanted to listen again

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1 person found this helpful

Amazing

I’ve just listened to all of her books, bar the city one, in a row. Olivia Laing is beautiful, she takes me out on a boat and puts on her scuba gear and dives down bringing me up ever more wondrous treasure. Think I’ll go again and then go through all the books that she quotes from. A great source for a dyslexic therapist cycling to work. Thanks Olivia.

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Perfect, painful.

I loved this, although parts were hard to listen to. It drew together lots of things I was a little familiar with into a whole that was new to me and hit me hard. Laing's final words were identical to my recent thoughts. I'm reading The Book of Trespass at the same time and there's some interesting overlap between the two books in the discussion of protest movements in the UK and the nature of political power over bodies.

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Fab book, average narrator

This is a wonderful book but unfortunately parts were ruined a bit by taking me out of the book, by the narrator mispronouncing things. Eg “Mesa” is not “messer”, and expose is not exposes

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4 people found this helpful

Brilliant book very well narrated

So interesting and engaging. Some strange mispronunciation but otherwise a solid clear reader. Will listen to more

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Enriching, eye-opening and eminently readable

This book feels like almost like a companion to Orwell’s Roses only with the human body as the focus rather than the climate. In the same way as Solnit uses Orwell as her framing, Laing uses Reich and his work and using that takes on a interconnected journey through feminism, illness, sexual freedom, art and so much more.

I found myself learning deeply about areas of medicine, psychology, feminism, art, gender, and the rise of the far-right in the early 20th century that I only had the basic facts on before I began reading. It helped me understand arguments I had previously dismissed because there were nuances I wasn’t aware of and helped me re-work and re-centre some of my own issues with my health and my feminism.

This is a book that was both enriching, eye-opening and eminently readable and I would encourage anyone to give it a try.

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Well written but a lot of ideological fluff

This book is really well-written and well read; however; the topic darts around with a feeling of self-importance of the writer and a lot of uninformed statements thrown out there as fact. I was quite bored and frustrated with the style but it was marginally more interesting than looking at the tube map so I stuck with it.

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