Shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Biography Award
A New York Times Notable Book of 2014
One of Slate’s Best 50 Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years
Why is it that some of the greatest works of literature…
have been produced by writers in the grip of alcoholism, an addiction that cost them happiness and caused harm to those who loved them?
Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever and Raymond Carver.
As she travels from Cheever’s New York to Williams’ New Orleans, from Hemingway’s Key West to Carver’s Port Angeles, she pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the miraculous possibilities of recovery.
Beautiful, captivating and original,The Trip to Echo Spring strips away the myth of the alcoholic writer to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.
‘Original, brave and very moving.’ Peter Conrad, Observer
Buy in the UK: Bookshop.org, LRB, Foyles, Waterstones, Amazon
Buy in the US: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Indiebound, Macmillan
Book of the year: New York Times, Time Magazine, Observer, Metro, Times, Economist, New Statesman and Times Literary Supplement
Read: Observer extract here and Times extract here
Listen: WNYC, Radio 4, KQED, CBC, KERA, NHNPR and NPR's All Things Considered
From the reviews...
‘Olivia Laing’s writing is beautifully modulated, her tone knowledgeable yet intimate. She can evoke a state of mind as gracefully as she evokes a landscape. The Trip to Echo Spring is a book for all writers or would-be writers. It’s one of the best books I’ve read about the creative uses of adversity: frightening but perversely inspiring.’ Hilary Mantel
‘I loved The Trip to Echo Spring. It's a beautiful book that has stayed with me in a profound way.’ Nick Cave
‘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
‘[A] charming and gusto-driven look at the alcoholic insanity of six famous writers . . . There is much to learn from Laing’s supple scholarship – and much to enjoy, too, in her obvious passion and engagement.’ Lawrence Osborne, New York Times
‘The book achieves its greatest force through Laing’s mix of intellect and intuition, which often recalls the New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm.’ Talitha Stevenson, New Statesman
‘Laing writes about alcoholism so eloquently, so sympathetically and so chillingly, that you can imagine this book saving somebody's life.’ The Australian
‘A good, sad book.’ Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
‘The Trip to Echo Spring is beautifully written, haunting, tragic, and instructive in the best sense. It’s a book for writers, and for readers, a book to read more than once.’ Jane Ciabattari, NPR
‘Laing writes a fluid, fertile nonfiction . . . a wondrously rewarding book.’ Laura Miller, Salon