Olivia Laing

speaker

938 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 10 Aug

Olivia Laing’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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London Review Bookshop Podcast · Lauren J. Joseph & Olivia Laing: Lean Cat, Savage Cat · 22 Jun 2026 podcast

We're going to talk about style, we're going to talk about all kinds of things, but Lauren is going to give us a little taste first.

I'm asking this question for everyone.

Lauren, did you read the audiobook?

Okay.

I first read it, what, two years ago?

First draft, early draft.

Where I want to start is where did it come from?

I actually didn't ask that question in our day-to-day friendship because I thought that the answer was worth saving for everybody to hear.

So it's really a novel that is deeply invested with doubles and doppelgangers.

I kept thinking about things like Dorian Gray, things like Talented Mr Ripley, but also films like Persona, like Performance, that very kind of 70s feeling of...

split personalities, people giving way to other people, people depending on people, people feeding off other people.

It's kind of vampiric in a strange way.

And like I said at the beginning, the second time reading was completely different.

By the end of it, I'd had a sense of what was happening.

But on the second reading, I realized that you were telling sort of two stories simultaneously.

So let's talk about that.

Why this novel of doubles and doppelgangers and especially this trans novel of doubles and doppelgangers?

Because it's like a Fassbender.

Yeah.

And actually Chinatown is a great comparison because Chinatown, you get the identity payoff in really the final seconds.

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