Picador, pp336, £20
Olivia Laing is a celebrated proponent of the genre-bending literary mashup: in this case of memoir, landscape history, literary criticism and travelogue. In her latest book, wrote Louis, ‘their [Laing is non-binary] journey is in search of a common paradise. From their own walled-garden in Suffolk, it stretches back to Milton’s , a text conceived against the backdrop of the Plague in 1665. “Time is cyclical”, Laing remarks from a Covid-ridden England in 2020.’
