I really enjoyed this - a relevant and powerful read. The essays used links to past fights for sexual liberation, against racism and misogyny to drive home many of the difficulties we face as individuals in the modern world. The mixture of storytelling, picking apart the lives of the people she scrutinises alongside alongside the hard-hitting societal truths was enthralling.

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

[Laing is non binary and pronoun fluid, so I’ve gone with ‘they’ as the most gender-neutral pronoun option in the absence of specifically stated preferences]

I have putting off writing this review for a long time on account of, you know, emotions and shit. Urgh. The truth is, I don’t think I really know how to begin to articulate the experience of reading this. It’s so … expansive and eye-opening and fascinating. And, um, kind of deeply painful too, because I don’t think there’s really a way to talk about the reality and the complexity of bodies without touching on painful things, of which death, suffering and identity scrape only the surface. Mostly, though, I’m just in awe of the mind that created a book like this. To move eruditely and compassionately, and yet also accessibly, through about century’s worth of art, politics, and medicine, and find uniting themes amongst what sometimes seems an impossible chaos of humanity, is simply an extraordinary feat and equally extraordinary to witness.

Everybody winds its exploratory, occasionally personal, narrative around the life and work of Wilheim Reich, someone I was familiar with because of, err, Kate Bush. There’s always been, I think, something intriguing and difficult about Reich: a student of Freud, he believed that emotional trauma was ultimately inextricable from bodily trauma (damage caused to the mind is expressed in the body, in freeing the body, we free the mind, etc.) and made an actual attempt to explore where fascism came from (at a time when Freud and his compatriots were insisting that their role was to remain neutral in all cases) only to die—some years later—in a United States prison, having succumbed to paranoia and potentially schizophrenia, insisting that, err, magic boxes were the cure for all ills.

Laing does not absolve Reich of his complexities (he grew quite abusive in later life, to say nothing of homophobic) but it is interesting—and unexpectedly moving—to see him spoken about as someone other than the guy who thought the power of orgasms could change the weather. He also makes a surprisingly effective through-line for a book about bodies and freedom and politics: this man who was at least at partial, if unintentional, inspiration for the sexual revolution, who wrote so passionately against both sexual and political repression, whose most infamous ‘therapy’ involved isolating in yourself in a box, and then died in a prison cell in a country that calls itself the land of the free.

To say the book is about Reich, however, is barely scrape the surface of its accomplishments. Reich’s ideas—and his limitations—offer a lens through which to investigate bodies as both of sites of vulnerability and tools for resistance. Laing examines the body in illness, the body in prison, the body *as* a prison, the body as a subject of violence, as well as the body as an expression of art, selfhood and protest. This is a journey that takes Laing from Reich and his contemporaries to Kathy Acker and Susan Sontag, to Dworkin, Carter and the Marquis de Sade, to Christopher Isherwood, Nina Simone and Malcom X, all via some figures I was personally less familiar with like Bayard Rustin and Ana Mendieta. And look I’m just not learned enough to be able to say sensible things about how Laing discusses these very disparate figures but I personally felt her perspective was always nuanced, knowledgable and compassionate, and the way she integrated their stories into the broader narrative was masterful. I mean, imagine finding something interesting to say about de Sade, of all people—and yet Laing manages.

I think there are probably some readers who may find the book’s structuring unconventional to the point of intimidating. And it did, honestly, take me a bit to adjust to Laing’s thematic fluidity—moving with them from person to person, idea to idea. But, in the end, I loved it and admired it, and I felt very moved by Laing’s … I can’t think of a better word for it than textual freedom. Which is fitting because, by the end of the book, they are inviting the reader to “imagine, for a minute, what it would be like to inhabit a body without fear.” It was slightly frightening for me to realise—either because of me, or because I’d just spent so long thinking about all the ways the body could be trapped, violated, and made vulnerable—that I couldn’t. But please don’t think this is a grim or a depressing book. It tackles grim and depressing subjects somewhat inevitably. And yet there’s a defiance to it—a rejection of constraint and conventionality—that feels just enough like hope.

It's rare to find a book that really changes how you think or makes you want to expand the edges of how you think. I feel kind of dizzied and grateful right now to Everybody for giving me that to me, at a time in my life when I wasn’t quite ready for it, but also deeply needed it. It’s such a confronting experience at times that I’m having trouble “recommending” it in the conventional sense. But if you’re open to what Everybody is offering, you are in for something both rare and remarkable.

olivia laing's incisive and adroit writing is compelling and offers plenty of food for thought. her reflections here struck a chord with me and i would definitely recommend it to others.

This book is impossible to describe. It’s politics, philosophy, feminism, sociology, psychology… well basically anything that gives Ms Laing a way to examine freedom and oppression. She brings in Susan Sontag, Andrea Dworkin, and Wilhelm Reich. I hadn’t heard of the latter scientist but it’s interesting that Freud is well known when they shared many ideas.

Ms Laing is very interesting and easy to read even when her knowledge is so wide ranging. She brings in diverse themes to sustain her argument and our attention. I learned loads but it didn’t feel like learning. It felt like sitting having a chat with a fascinating friend. There are pages of notes in case readers want to follow up on particular parts or people. I want to research Mr Reich and find out more about him.

An excellent gift for someone who is widely read and interested in the politics of oppression.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley

This non-fiction text is hard going at times, with long, academic-style chapters giving a history of suffering, largely through the lens of the life of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. But I laughed out loud at the line “imagine telling JK Rowling” that Hirschfeld, another German doctor, had calculated 43 million possibilities of gender and sexuality in 1910. Everybody does have lightness and humour in it, but I can’t deny that I was pleased to discover I had reached the end earlier than expected because there were pages and pages of citations. Possibly the best thing I got out of it was a desire to listen to Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love album thanks to Laing pointing out that Cloudbusting is about Reich’s orgone machine, which also nicely coincided with Kate Bush getting popular with the youths.

Everybody by Olivia Laing.
At a moment in which basic rights are once again in danger, Olivia Laing conducts an ambitious investigation into the body and its discontents, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to chart a daring course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, from gay rights and sexual liberation to feminism and the civil rights movement.
An OK read. Slow but readable. 3*.

Wow! This is a stunning, informative meditation on life and freedom. Olivia Laing’s writing is engaging and beautiful - it’s just sublime! I can’t thank her enough for sharing her mind with us. I don’t have the words to do this amazing work justice so instead, please go and read this exceptional work.
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

I really like Laing's non fiction work, their depth of knowledge about artists, especially unsung female artists is always interesting and informative, this book is no exception. Everybody is an exploration about freedom especially in relation to bodies, focussing on Reich's beliefs about the body. The book includes Reich falling out with Freud, (unsurprising really and interesting to reflect on how Freud is still revered, whilst Reich was pilloried and his works burnt), Andrea Dworkin, section 28, Kate Bush's album Cloudbursting, Susan Sontag and her thoughts on illness and much more. A truly thought provoking book.

With thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In LinkedIn: Need to up your reading? There’s a wealth of new books out in May covering #business #science #health #mindandbody #history and #essays.
Everybody: A Book About Freedom by Olivia Laing an examination of the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.

Some parts of Everybody by Olivia Laing held my interest and others didn't. Overall I didn't enjoy it as much as her previous works.

I really enjoyed this book. It's such a deeply researched, engaging read, and it manages to strike the perfect balance between being entertaining and educational. The book is an important exploration of the rich history of sexuality and the body. Beautifully written and ambitious in its scope, I would recommend Everybody to anyone interested in psychology, feminism, LGBT History or Sociology.

Very interesting and elegantly written book. Ties up a lot of disparate themes, some more successful than others. You would never say Laing carries her knowledge lightly but a very good read..