# Brian Dillon & Olivia Laing: Ambivalence

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/london-review-bookshop-podcast-169718/brian-dillon-olivia-laing-ambivalence
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/london-review-bookshop-podcast-169718/brian-dillon-olivia-laing-ambivalence.md
Podcast: [London Review Bookshop Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/london-review-bookshop-podcast-169718)
Published: 2026-07-28T11:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/LRB2122244996.mp3
Audio file: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/LRB2122244996.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/london-review-bookshop-podcast-169718/episodes/brian-dillon-olivia-laing-ambivalence
Duration seconds: 4144

## Resource

In Ambivalence (Fitzcarraldo) Brian Dillon explores what learning meant to its author, what it enabled and denied, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six, when he left his native Dublin. It's at once a memoir of that city in the 1980s and 1990s, an uncynical portrait of the adolescent and early-adult mind, and an intimate defence of radical thinking about literature and life. Dillon was in conversation with writer Olivia Laing, author of The Silver Book. You can buy a copy of Ambivalence ⁠from the London Review Bookshop⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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