To the River
A Journey Beneath the Surface
Olivia Laing
“A river passing through a landscape catches the world and gives it back redoubled: a shifting, glinting world more mysterious than the one we customarily inhabit. Rivers run through our civilisations like strings through beads”
Available as Paperback, eBook
An odyssey along the banks of the River Ouse, from source to sea, by the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Lonely City and Crudo
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.
“A beautifully written, elegant and subtle debut”
financial Times
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“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
Olivia Laing
Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic. They’re the author of eight books, including Funny Weather, Everybody and the Sunday Times number one bestseller The Garden Against Time. Laing’s first novel, Crudo, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and in 2018 they were awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. They’re an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts and their books have been translated into twenty-one languages. Their latest novel is The Silver Book.
@olivialanguage | olivialaing.com
“To the River is a constant delight: dreamy and lyrical, meditative and wry… A beautiful - and beautifully written - book, every bit as enchanting as its watery subject.”
Stephanie Cross
The Lady
