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Across literature, islands often emerge in spaces that are Romantically remote, far-flung and distant, bubbling at the edges of our consciousness. This is the picture that many have painted after reading Amy Liptrot’s beautiful new memoir, The Outrun. And who can blame them? We open the book with a powerful snapshot of a life caught in the whirl and spin of arrival and departure; a mother arrives clutching her newborn as her husband is sedated, restrained and deported to a secure mental health unit in Aberdeen. Thus begins Liptrot’s story. Across the book her twenty-eight chapters weave and murmur, mimicking the flight of the kittiwakes and guillemots that litter the skylines of the islands, meshing together in the retelling of her journey of recovery from addiction.
Throughout The Outrun the rugged landscape of Orkney leaves little room for sanctuary, its precarious cliff-faces and churned beaches instead providing space for stark reflection. A space ripped raw by the elemental fury of strong salt winds, it is a place that Liptrot reluctantly returns to. Jobless, homeless, loveless, her return to the island is meant to be a fleeting rest-stop a migratory pause in her path to sobriety. While she is constantly drawn to the seductive and intoxicating cityscape of London through scrambled signals and waning wifi, the natural environs of Orkney slowly tether her to a new life amongst the elusive call of the corncrake and the history of ambergris. Swapping strobe lights for the ‘merry dancers’ and wine-bottles for sea-swimming, the natural and visceral landscape of the islands plots a new personal topography; one that traces the interminably changeable borders of the ‘coastline paradox’. Roving endlessly back and forth across the outer island of Papay, Liptrot’s self-mapping charts new territory on the island, finding places ‘beyond the internet’ which serve as self-reflective rest-points on her pathway to recovery.
Through her island excursions Liptrot re-orientates our geographical axes. From her position on Papay it is not the island that is remote or cut off from the world, but London. Coloured in a narcotic haze the metropolis moves from youthful memories of sunblushed days to dark alleyways and violent encounters. The city becomes a threatening edgeland, a space tainted with the sharp tang of alcohol and the slow ache of loss. It is no longer the sparsely populated islands of Orkney that are distant, fractal and fragmented, but the over-bright bustle of London with its late night raves and dangerously accessible off-licenses.
At times reading The Outrun is less like reading a coherent journey but rather following a string of interlinking essays. Charting a course across this stunning text, it is as if Liptrot’s life itself has become islanded. An archipelago of memories and personal moments which rise and swell with the turning of the tide. The vibrant and dynamic landscape of Orkney serves as a powerful resource of metaphor and recuperation. ‘Tremors’, ‘Wrecked’ and ‘Drifting’ slowly sweep towards the final chapter ‘Renewables’ where her two years spent recollecting the debris of her life ‘stretch and glitter’ behind her as the
text’s final departure moves towards a point where she is ‘ready to be brave’.
This is a beautiful and provocative debut by Liptrot, one which opens the island space to new imaginings that are not coloured by the mythical ebb and flow of isolation and insularity. But rather opens the island as a relational space which asks pertinent questions about our relationship with the world, and our ability to reconnect.
The Outrun is available now from Canongate.