The Trip to Echo Spring

“Laing, with shimmering detail and arrestig insights, presents a beautifully elucidating and moving group portrait of writers enslaved by drink and redeemed by 'the capacity of literature to somehow...make one feel less flinchingly alone.'”—Booklist (starred review)

“I’m sorry I’ve finished this wonderful book because I feel I’ve been talking to a wise friend. I’ve been trying to work out exactly how Olivia Laing drew me in, because I hardly drink myself and have no particular attachment to the group of writers whose trials she describes. I think the tone is beautifully modulated, knowledgeable yet intimate, and she can evoke a state of mind as gracefully as she evokes a landscape....I think this is a book for all writers or would-be writers, whether succeeding or failing, whether standing on their feet or flat on the pavement....It’s one of the best books I’ve read about the creative uses of adversity: frightening but perversely inspiring.”—Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize–winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

“I loved The Trip to Echo Spring. It's a beautiful book that has stayed with me in a profound way.”—Nick Cave

“A beguiling, beautifully written journey in search of six famous literary drunks. What gives her book its brilliance and originality...[is] the quality of its writing.”—The Sunday Times (London)

“The Trip to Echo Spring...thank God, never reductively answers the question [why writers drink] but thoughtfully explores it through an examination of the lives and careers of 'Tennessee Williams, John Cheever and Raymond Carver among others.”—Jay McInerney

“The tortured relationship between literary lions and their liquor illuminates the obscure terrain of psychology and art in this searching biographical medidation....Laing's astute analysis of the pervasive presence and meaning of drink in the writers' texts, and its reflection of the writers' struggle to shape—and escape—reality...A fine study of human frailty through the eyes of its most perceptive victims”—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“A provocative, evocative blend of memoir, literary history and lyrical travel writing.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The beauty of Laing's book lies not just in the poetry of her prose, the rich array of images, and literary allusions to her chosen subjects evoked during her transcontinental ghost-hunt, but intriguing links she makes to a wider literary landscape.”—The Independent (London)

“Laing’s analysis of the complex addiction is consistently shrewd. But what makes The Trip to Echo Spring truly worthwhile is that she, like those she writes about, is a terrific writer.”—The Times (London)

“This book is a triumphant exercise in creative reading in which diary entries, letters, poems, stories and plays are woven together to explore deep, interconnected themes of dependence, denial and self-destructiveness. It is a testimony to this book’s compelling power that having finished it, I immediately wanted to read it again.”—Scotland on Sunday

“Like a night out with an academically-inclined Elizabeth Taylor or Ava Gardner. Sodden, surprising, riotous, and crazily up and down. Welsh puritan that I am, I loved it.”—Daily Mail

"The book’s subtitle, Why Writers Drink, undersells her achievement. …[Laing has produced] a nuanced portrait—via biography, memoir, analysis—of the urge of the hyperarticulate to get raving drunk.”—New Statesman (London)

“It’s deliciously evocative, Laing’s melancholic and lyrical style conjuring the location, before effortlessly segueing into medical facts about alcoholism, the effects on the lives of each writer, and well-chosen passages from their work. This is a highly accomplished book, and highly recommended.”—List (London)

“Matches smart textual analysis of 20th-century greats with down-and-dirty ferreting....A superb idea, exceptionally well executed.”—Metro (London)