These essays showcase Laing as an imaginative and empathetic critic of the arts. She gets at texture, technique, feeling, and politics all at once. It's a pleasure to follow Laing as she pokes around companionably, examining the things that interest her.--Annalisa Quinn, NPR [Olivia Laing is] a kind of cultural sage.an accidental literary grande dame of the emotional havoc wrought by late capitalism and digital disconnect. Laing is radically empathetic, a writer-activist.--Hillary Kelly, Vulture Laing's arts writing is sharp-minded, and her manner is generous toward both subject and reader.--John Glassie, Washington Post Laing writes of her creative subjects in a winning, passionate voice that proves both soothing and galvanizing, especially amid a panic.

It's not just art we need in an emergency, but writers, like Laing, who gently guide our eyes to what's out there.--Alina Cohen, Observer As exterior life shuts temporarily down, Funny Weather is an immensely useful reminder that new space can be intellectual as well as physical. Laing is a tremendously gifted genre-mixer. Funny Weather is an invitation to Laing's imaginary museum, where minds if not bodies meet, and where true hospitality resides.--Lily Meyer, Hyperallergic Laing opens each piece with a deceptive ease [and] alights upon poetic insights. [H]er light touch throughout these essays makes room for some stunning perceptions.--A. V.

Club Like all great critics, Olivia Laing combines formidable intelligence with boundless curiosity and fabulous taste, but she also has a rare quality of intimacy; an ability to connect the reader to a work of art or literature (or for that matter a facet of life itself) with a directness that lights it up like nothing else. It's why I read her.--James Lasdun, author of Afternoon of a Faun A fine writer's embrace of the artists who preceded her, friendly visits with their lives, and loving acknowledgement of their foundational contributions. A work of joy in recognition.--Sarah Schulman, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse I yield to absolutely no one in my admiration of Olivia Laing; her essays are magical liberations of words and ideas, art and love; they're the essence of great twenty-first century literature: brilliantly expressed, wildly uncontained, willful, and wonderfully unbound.--Philip Hoare, author of RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR.