The Outrun

The Outrun is a 2016 memoir by the Scottish journalist and author Amy Liptrot. It is set in Orkney, her childhood home, where she returned to rehabilitate after becoming an alcoholic in London. The book combines nature writing with self-reflection. It won her the 2016 Wainwright Prize and the 2017 PEN/Ackerley Prize. Critics in the United Kingdom and the United States have warmly welcomed the book, describing it as beautiful and moving, and classifying it variously as a travelogue, a work of nature writing, and a recovery memoir. The book is being adapted as a film, directed by Nora Fingscheidt, and produced by and starring Saoirse Ronan. Summary The Outrun describes Amy Liptrot's experiences when she returns to live in Orkney, where she grew up on a farm with her schizophrenic and bipolar father and her evangelical Christian mother. She tells of her rehabilitation after ten unhappy years in London, during which she had become an alcoholic and drug user. She combines reflections and memories with immediate descriptions of the islands' wild nature, wind, geology, and wildlife. To her surprise, she gets a temporary job, on Orkney, mapping rare corncrakes for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). Later, she spends a winter on the Orkney island of Papa Westray in the RSPB's house, which is normally only used in summer.