One of the things I love most? When I’m grabbed by a book that won’t let go.
I read The Outrun by Amy Liptrot in three sittings. When I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. I wanted to get back into Liptrot’s world.
That’s not to say it’s an easy read. It tells the story of Liptrot’s addiction. She spends a few wild years in London and loses things, a boyfriend, her flat, a few jobs, and friends. She is robbed and assaulted.
While descent is brutal, her writing is stunning.
“The sun lowered. The crowd gathered and tightened; flexed ankles met listless wrists and hands holding cigarettes. There were shaded glances down on the grass and drunken daydreams somewhere up there where the aeroplane vapour trails crossed.”
Once Liptrot recognizes the need to stop drinking, she completes a recovery program. Then, she moves back to Orkney, the islands north of Scotland.
Liptrot’s family is from England, but she grew up in Orkney.
“My life was rough and windy and tangled. Growing up in the wind leaves you strong, sloped and adept at seeking shelter.”
Among the puffins, facing the wind, taking walks, plunging into the cold waters, and gazing at the stars, Liptrot slowly recovers.
An insider with an outsider’s eye and this makes her the perfect guide. She is able to convey a sense of place, the feeling of being on the islands, while explaining its peculiarities to a person who has never been there.
“At the end of a winter the land is brown and washed-out and the Outrun seems barren, but I know its secrets.”
Similarly, she has insight into the harrowing life of an addict. She has lived for long stretches both addicted and sober. She shows the reader how one state has a hold on the other.
“Drinking alcoholically is an incomplete remedy, a repeated mistake, a journey that never reaches its destination. Whatever ease or high it did promise I could no longer reach: it ran away from me, always just over the horizon.”
Nothing about her writing feels indulgent. The narrative holds the tension between her genetic legacy, the hand she was dealt, and her circumstances. Much of her story shows why it’s impossible to extract any one reason for her addiction from the context of it. Recovery is just as complex.
What makes this book so special is the way Liptrot blends these two elements, the wild landscape of Orkney with her inner life.
"My body is a continent. Forces are at work in the night. A bruxist, I grind my teeth in my sleep, like tectonic plates. When I blink the sun flickers, my breath pushes the clouds across the sky and the waves roll into the shore in time with my beating heart.
The landscape and life are intricately connected. They shape each other.
This is what I want in a book: to be swept out to sea, wash up in a place I’ve never been, and find out what it feels like to live there. I want to be taken inside.
I had the ideal reading location for this book.
This is the covered porch at my cottage in Nova Scotia. My grandfather built it with his friends. It’s on the Northumberland Strait. As I was reading, I could hear the waves, smell the salt, and turn to glance at the Atlantic stretching out.
How much does where you read a book influence your feelings about it?
While I’m sure this setting added to my experience of reading The Outrun, I’m also sure that it’s a great book. I think you’ll love it.
P.S.
The Outrun is being made into a film with Saoirse Ronan.
My favourite interview with the author, “I wanted to put the sex into nature writing.” (Someone needed to!)
An excerpt from the first chapters of the book.
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