Amy Liptrot

After a decade of heavy partying and hard drinking in London, Amy Liptrot returns home to Orkney, a remote island off the north of Scotland. The Outrun maps Amy's inspiring recovery as she walks along windy coasts, swims in icy Atlantic waters, tracks Orkney's wildlife, and reconnects with her parents, revisiting and rediscovering the place that shaped her. A Guardian Best Nonfiction Book of 2016 Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller New Statesman Book of the Year

A Memoir

The Outrun

Laura Dobie

There are different types of breaking waves - spilling, plunging, collapsing, surging - but although they collapse in different manners, there is only so much height any wave can sustain before it comes crashing down.

over years of systematic drinking I had worn my brakes down, like the action of waves on rock, so much that they could never be repaired.

AA recommends meditation, which I find hard - I get distracted, upset or fall asleep - so instead I practise my own form of contemplation by walking on the hill and absorbing my surroundings. When I walk, I am soothed by being in motion.

A Fata Morgana can be seen yet never approached. Like Hether Blether, it always remains on the strip of the horizon.

Maybe things are not going to be so bad. I've swapped disco lights for celestial lights but I'm still surrounded by dancers. I am orbited by sixty-seven moons.

This is such a beautiful description of a murmuration of starlings.

Every day on Papay, there's a moment, looking back, facing into the northerly wind, at the coastline I've just walked, for instance, when my heart soars. I see starlings flocking, hundreds of individual birds forming and re-forming shapes in liquid geometry, outwitting predators and following each other to find a place to roost for the night.

This week I’ve seen more seals than people, noses uppermost in the bay.

I'm repairing these dykes at the same time as I'm putting myself back together. I am building my defences, and each time I don't take a drink when I feel like it, I am strengthening new pathways in my brain. I have to break the walls down a bit more before I can start to build them up again. I have to work with the stones I've got and can't spend too long worrying if I'm making the perfect wall. I just have to get on with placing stones.

A well written and thought provoking account of addiction, alcoholism, recovery and nature’s potential to heal.

I felt like I was on a remote Scottish island with the author and it made me want community more. 

Laura Gill

Leah

The Sunday Times runaway bestseller - an exhilarating nature memoir about recovering from alcoholism in Orkney

Rochelle Butcher

Ricky Burgess

Rue Moonflower

Karolina Klermon-Williams

When Amy Liptrot returns to Orkney after more than a decade away, she is drawn back to the Outrun on the sheep farm where she grew up. Approaching the land that was once home, memories of her childhood merge with the recent events that have set her on this journey. Amy was shaped by the cycle of the seasons, birth and death on the farm, and her father's mental illness, which were as much a part of her childhood as the wild, carefree existence on Orkney. But as she grew up, she longed to leave this remote life. She moved to London and found herself in a hedonistic cycle. Unable to control her drinking, alcohol gradually took over. Now thirty, she finds herself washed up back home on Orkney, standing unstable at the cliff edge, trying to come to terms with what happened to her in London. Spending early mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, the days tracking Orkney's wildlife - puffins nesting on sea stacks, arctic terns swooping close enough to feel their wings - and nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Amy slowly makes the journey towards recovery from addiction. The Outrun is a beautiful, inspiring book about living on the edge, about the pull between island and city, and about the ability of the sea, the land, the wind and the moon to restore life and renew hope.

Hannah Swithinbank

Pierke Bosschieter

marie

Sara Holman

Gabrielle Griffiths

Ana Chirus

James Haliburton

After a childhood spent on an island in northern Scotland, and shaped as much by her father s mental illness as by the cycle of the seasons on their sheep farm, Amy Liptrot longed to escape her remote life. When she moved to London, she found herself in a hedonistic cycle. Unable to control her drinking, she gradually let alcohol take over. After more than a decade away, Liptrot returns home to Orkney, struggling to come to terms with what happened to her in London and trying to heal. Spending early mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, her days tracking Orkney s wildlife puffins nesting on sea stacks, arctic terns swooping close enough that she can feel their wings and her nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Liptrot makes the journey toward recovery from addiction and begins to come alive again. Luminous, life-affirming. . . . I ll be pressing it into people s hands for years to come. Olivia Laing A lyrical, brave memoir. Will Self, Guardian"

The Outrun A Memoir

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