Description
Book SynopsisOver 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.
Trade ReviewA beautifully written, elegant and subtle debut * * Financial Times * *
A gentle, wise and riddling book -- ROBERT MACFARLANE
Magical . . . By turns lyrical, melancholic and exultant,
To the River just makes you want to follow Olivia Laing all the way to the sea -- PHILIP HOARE * * Daily Telegraph * *
A beautifully written meditation on landscape * * The Sunday Times * *
Wonderfully allusive . . . The book's subject and structure fuse pleasingly, weaving and meandering, pooling into biographical, mythical or historical backwaters * * Observer * *
Without 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 psyche * * The Times * *
Has a Sebaldian edge to it that lifts it out of memoir and biography and into something far more tantalizing and suggestive * * Guardian * *
This hugely accomplished first book draws on local lore and history, a vast range of research and some soaring lyrical writing * * Sunday Times * *
Olivia Laing joins the best nature writers . . . Laing is a brilliant wordsmith and this is a beautifully accomplished book * * Independent * *
Brave, distinctive, and deeply intelligent . . . The book has an intense, humming, cumulative effect * * Literary Review * *
