I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this book – the autobiography of a young woman struggling to overcome her alcholism. Within the first few pages I was proved wrong. This is a beautiful, poignant, funny, and thought-provoking story that moves between city life in London to island ways on Orkney like the sucking sea on the distant shore.
It’s the story of how nature and a simpler way of life can reconnect with what is important; a story that captures that feeling that lots of us who grow up in out-of-the-way places have at times during our lives. We might strive to leave the place but only We are allowed to criticise it.
You don’t have to know Orkney to be able to picture the environment that Amy Liptrop finds herself suddently back in, making sense of her life. With evocative descriptions of landscape, forna, and flora, I fear that by reading The Outrun I am going to have to travel to the Orkney Islands.
Amy’s story is not always an easy read, weaving her alcoholism with her father’s mental illness, but it is inspiring and uplifting too with well-observed insights into human nature. I chanced on this book in a local bookshop having heard nothing of it before, but I am so, so glad to have discovered such an engaging read.
