Over sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the River Ouse,Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk its banks,from source to sea. Along the way,she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives,tracing their intricate flow through literature,mythology and folklore.Lyrical and stirring,To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.
Publisher: Canongate BooksISBN: 9781786891587Number of pages: 304Weight: 224 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 17 mmEdition: Main - Canons Edition
MEDIA REVIEWS
A beautifully written,elegant and subtle debutA gentle,wise and riddling bookMagical...By turns lyrical,melancholic and exultant,To the River just makes you want to follow Olivia Laing all the way to the seaA beautifully written meditation on landscapeWonderfully allusive...The book's subject and structure fuse pleasingly,weaving and meandering,pooling into biographical,mythical or historical backwatersWithout wanting to sound gushing,her writing at its sublime best reminds me of Richard Mabey's nature prose and the poetry of Alice Oswald...Laing seems to lack a layer of skin,rendering her susceptible to the smallest vibrations of the natural world as well as to the frailties of the human psycheHas a Sebaldian edge to it that lifts it out of memoir and biography and into something far more tantalizing and suggestiveThis hugely accomplished first book draws on local lore and history,a vastrange of research and some soaring lyrical writingOlivia Laing joins the best nature writers...Laing is a brilliant wordsmith and this is a beautifully accomplished bookBrave,distinctive,and deeply intelligent...The book has an intense,humming,cumulative effect
Olivia Laing
Olivia Laing is an award-winning British writer,novelist and cultural critic. Her latest book Funny Weather: Art in Emergency is published in April 2020.
Visit the Olivia Laing author page
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