I found this book hidden against the wall and between the bed of my recently deceased Uncle amongst a few other stacks of very dusty books. I was enthralled by the idea that I gleaned from the title and the description on the back. So, I took to reading it as soon as I had the spare time.
In the beginning, the book seems to promise the development of ideas bourne from a fusion of travelogue, the author's struggles with alcohol, and the works and miseries of well-known and documented alcoholic writers. Maybe she would find some relation to features in her work and the work of the subject writers, similarities in habit, or something. However, the author seems to struggle at gluing the sections of her travelogue (the least interesting parts of the book and seem to be just filler) to the stories of the writers in question and their works along with her own past story and struggles with addiction.
These main parts of the greater work simply never cohere and in fact, I came to dread the travelogue bits which were populated with bits of pointless overheard conversations, descriptions of randos, and bland tracts of her actions of arriving at an airport terminal/getting on a train/etc. Her backstory as presented was interesting but likewise, it never entered the orbit of the stories of the other writers. There were no discussions of her work at all and what part her addictions had to play in her own texts and if there were any parallels in the other authors' writing. This let me down.
The book was not all a waste of time though. I did like some parts of it but the descriptions of the miseries of the more famous authors though high points are not necessarily exclusive to this work especially since there are no attached insights. The bits of her going to AA meetings abroad were mildly interesting and touring sites historic to the authors she was discussing were okay and definitely worked for starting off chapters and jumping between different stories. However, the length of chapters was a definite negative when it came to my reading experience. Now, I do hate, and I mean HATE overlong chapters, and this book had chapters that averaged 50-plus-pages. I don't care if they have breaks in them, the chapters needed to be much shorter and compact.
Overall, I didn't mind the book, it was a fairly mediocre read. There were some high points, but not enough to elevate my experience, and what I hoped the book promised was just not what was delivered. I'm not angry that I read it but it could've been so much better. I don't really recommend this one because it just does not bring anything new or special to its subject(s). ( )

Featuring Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Carver, Cheever, Tennessee Williams, and John Berryman, Olivia Laing follows the literary path and the bottles left in the wake. It's a sad book, on balance, as the extreme talent of these men is offset by their severe mental strain and the herculean self-medicating in which they indulged to dull the pain. The book offers a nice counterbalance to [Max Perkins: Editor of Genius], which sometimes looked at Hemingway and Fitzgerald with rose-colored glasses. Lang demolishes any rosiness, exposing the bourbon-tinged truth. Cheever gets a lions' share of the page time, which is a refreshing change given the other company usually attracts the spotlight. And Cheever actually managed to pull himself out of the bottle. It was also nice to learn about John Berryman, who is not a common figure of attention, and was the only poet here. Laing necessarily examines some of the underlying mental difficulties these men faced, and some of the precipitating factors that led them to the booze. And she also examines their published writings for how some of their personal feelings about booze and its effects on them leaked into the fiction. Most interesting, there are several deep dives into journaling and other writings done by the men while in rehabilitation facilities - terribly interesting to see their shifting perceptions as they go through rehab multiple times and come out slightly changed each time.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended. ( )

Olivia Laing recounts her travels around the United States, visiting places associated with six American authors (she apologises that they are all dead white males: Scott Fitzgerald; Ernest Hemingway; Tennessee Williams; John Cheever; John Berryman; Raymond Carver) who all had problems with alcohol.
This is not biography or literary criticism, although it contains some of both. This is an enjoyable literary travelogue about alcoholism and American authors, with some reflections on Laing’s own life. Laing’s style has an easy familiarity, even when quoting technical medical jargon about alcoholism, and although the potted biographies, literary criticism and travelogue don’t seamlessly blend together, there is plenty to enjoy.

I had not read any Tennessee Williams prior to this book, although aware of the plays, and only had name awareness of Berryman, but this didn’t particularly reduce my interest in the book. However it was a shame that Laing didn’t write about Carson McCullers. ( )

I enjoyed the memoir aspect of this book less than the biographical portions, and the self-indulgent travelogue the least. Valuable for the quotes from some of my all-time favorite authors, but Laing doesn't have my favorite writing style. ( )

Olivia Liang's book "The Trip to Echo Spring: On writers and drinking" had a fantastic concept -- delving into the reasons why so many successful writers have a problem with alcohol -- but I didn't care for the way the book was written.

Liang spends a lot of time talking about herself and her travels, and she also spends a lot of time jumping around in the stories about various writers such as John Cheever, Earnest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald in a super jarring way.

I found the stories about John Cheever to be the most interesting part of this book (so much so that I'll likely search for a biography of him at some point.) Echo Spring felt like a lost opportunity to put together something great. ( )