Review of To the River, by Olivia Laing

To the River by Olivia Laing

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This 2011 work of nonfiction follows the author’s walking tour along the course of the River Ouse, in Sussex, England. We experience with her the path through meadows rich with bird and plant-life—or alternately through industrial suburbs--the heat of sunny days and the sudden, chilling rainstorms, the immersive sensation of swimming at various watering holes along the way, and the traveler’s relief at having a hot meal and a rest at an inn. Laing treats the reader to fascinating digressions on historical events, such as the Battle of Lewes in 1264, when the rebel army of Simon de Montfort defeated the royalists; in the mid-19th century, during construction of a railroad, workers came across hundreds of skeletons from this ancient battle, with which they infilled a macabre embankment near the river. Laing also weaves the melancholy story of Virginia and Leonard Wolfe through the book, their home near Lewes, and Virginia’s suicide by drowning in the Ouse in 1941. Other writers, scientists, and engineers populate the book, such as Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willows, which sparked Laing’s fascination with rivers; Gideon Mantell, the physician who found the fossils of a dinosaur near the river in the early 19th century, and named it an iguanodon. Central to the book is the river itself, and the impact of humans on its very shape and course, with the draining of surrounding marshlands; and canalizing of portions of the river beginning in the late 18th century. Despite these efforts, Laing demonstrates that the element of water escapes human control, to flood and destroy towns, mills, beaches, and fields. Seeping into the story of this riverine journey, water itself becomes a fluid embodiment of the ever-flowing passage of life, where “there is no possibility of permanent tenancy on this circling planet” (p. 245).



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