To the River
The Ouse River in Sussex, England, has run through Laing’s life since childhood, carrying both joy and sorrow. She even swam near the place where Virginia Woolf’s body was found. A journalist transforming herself into a stellar creative-nonfiction writer, Laing decided that the antidote to a spell of personal turmoil was to walk the 42 miles of the Ouse, while immersing herself in Woolf’s life and writings. As she treks from the river’s nearly invisible source to its industrialized convergence with the sea, Laing is enchanting, informative, and keenly amusing as she unscrolls a many-branched history of the region, lively and diverse literary allusions, ecological insights, and escapades in sweltering heat, drenching rain, fields of sheep, and very old inns. She stretches out on the ground to watch the sky and feel the land’s flesh and bones, names every flower, tree, and bird, and describes with comedic deftness the people she meets. Laing’s language is supple and saturated, bright and dappled in this gracefully meandering river of words and deeply pleasurable journey across Woolf’s tidal world and the many-storied English countryside. --Donna Seaman