One of the best books I've read about the creative uses of adversity: frightening but perversely inspiring
- HILARY MANTEL,
A work of art, with a voice and a mood all its own.
* Nick Hornby *
Original, brave and very moving . . . Her insights shine with beauty yet are shaded by sympathy and compassion
* Observer *
A terrific writer
* The Times *
Full of insight, compassion and unexpected beauty
* Guardian *
Haunting . . . a moving, troubling, gorgeously written book
* Independent on Sunday, Paperbacks of the Year *
Beguiling, beautifully written . . . brilliant and original
- JOHN CAREY, * The Sunday Times *
Beguiling and incisive
* New York Times *
Laing's prose is lucid and exuberant
* Financial Times *
Laing is a brilliant wordsmith and this is a beautifully accomplished book
* Independent *
Why were so many authors of the greatest works of literature consumed by alcoholism? In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing takes a journey across America, examining the links between creativity and drink in the overlapping work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever and Raymond Carver.
From Hemingway's Key West to Williams's New Orleans, Laing pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, and strips away the tangle of mythology to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.