To The River by Olivia Laing

 

To The River charts its narrative along the banks of Sussex’s Ouse, as Laing documents her journey from the river’s confluence to its exit in the English channel. It’s a missive filled with erudite observations of the land and water in the heady in-breath of summer, accompanied by the meandering streams of consciousness naturally provoked by the varying roles of rivers in literature and mythology. Skimming and deep-diving alternately into lives evermore bound by varying degrees to rivers, it also looks at the life of Virginia Woolf through her relationship with the river. With Woolf at the centre, Laing nurtures a theme of mental illness with grace: Descartes distilled the relationship in his Meditations; Laing, on a less existential level, explores the reciprocal and beholden nature of the mind and brain in her real time riverside commentary. Laing's river journey (and book) seems to have many motivations: a lifelong affinity, a quixotic curiosity, a heartbroken polymath looking for an escape. Whatever the reason, while it is not necessary prose – but what is when everyone has a blog and a tumblr and must be heard – its beauty and conclusions find a critical hold in both academic and emotive axes. [Renée Rowland]