{"product_id":"to-the-river-canons-71","title":"To the River (Canons  71)","description":"\u003cp\u003eA beautiful  lyrical book tells the tale of the river in which Virginia Woolf drowned  and heralds the arrival of a major new voice in nature writing One midsummer week more than 60 years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the Ouse in 1941  Olivia Laing walked that same Sussex river from source to sea. The result is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscapeand how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. Along the way  Laing explores the roles rivers play in human lives  tracing their intricate flow through literature and mythology alike. She excavates all sorts of stories from the Ouses marshy banks  from the brutal Barons War of the 13th century to the \"Dinosaur Hunters \" the 19th-century amateur naturalists who first cracked the fossil code. Central among these ghosts is  of course  Virginia Woolf herself: her life  her writing  and her watery death. Woolf is the most constant companion on Laings journey  and this book can be read in part as a biography of this extraordinary English writer  refracted back through the river she loved. But other writers float through these pages tooamong them Iris Murdoch  Shakespeare  Homer  and Kenneth Grahame  author of the riverside classic The Wind in the Willows. The result is a wonderfully discursive read  interweaving biography  history  nature writing  and memoir  and driven by Laings deep understanding of science and cultural history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44947575930933,"sku":"ByrdShop_1847677932","price":93.55,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781847677938.jpg?v=1770019313","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/to-the-river-canons-71","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}