"A lyrical, brave memoir.… It’s this aptitude Liptrot has for marrying her inner-space with wild outer-spaces that makes her such a compelling writer—and one to watch."
"[T]he sheer sensuality of Liptrot’s prose and her steely resolve immediately put her right up there with the best of the best. Liptrot is an Orcadian warrior with the breeze in her blood and poetry in her fingers, and The Outrun equals works by fellow islanders such as George Mackay Brown and Peter Maxwell Davies. It may even be a future classic."
"A stunning, wild, and gracefully rendered account of life in the Scottish hinterlands."
"Amy Liptrot has lived her life on the edge of things, both literally and metaphorically. The Outrun, her beautiful first book, gives a wonderfully evocative account of both, blending searing memoir with sublime nature writing, and coming up with a unique piece of prose that amounts to a stirring personal philosophy of how to live. Her descriptive writing of the [Orkney] islands and their wildlife absolutely sizzles, a scintillating mix of clear-eyed insight and poetic heart."
"Whether [Liptrot]… writes of walking along the wind-scoured coasts or taking polar-bear dips in the icy waters, her prose is spare, lean, and beautiful, much like the country about which she writes."
"Luminous.… Fresh, clear-eyed and unflinching."
…[a] gorgeous debut…More than 10 years after fleeing, Liptrot returns to the Orkney Islands, chronicling the first two years of her sobriety in this recovery memoir closer in spirit to the work of the naturalist Rick Bass than the hard-drinking tales of Caroline Knapp or Augusten Burroughs. Full of lucid self-discovery and shimmering prose, The Outrun is more atmospheric than it is dramatic…Building drystone walls becomes a lesson in patience; delivering newborn lambs brings a sense of renewal. Metaphors lay things bare with a stunning simplicity as Liptrot searches for answers again and again in her island landscape, all sky and sea, where not even language has the ability to conceal.
The New York Times Book Review - Domenica Ruta
★ 01/09/2017
"[Liptrot’s] prose is spare, lean, and beautiful, much like the country about which she writes."
"A lyrical, brave memoir… [Liptrot] walks the hills and dances between the standing stones of Stenness; she joins a wild swimming club and, hauling herself from the gelid waters, ‘naked on the beach, I am a selkie slipped from its skin.’ It’s this aptitude Liptrot has for marrying her inner-space with wild outer-spaces that makes her such a compelling writer—and one to watch."
"[A] gorgeous debut. . . . Full of lucid self-discovery and shimmering prose."
New York Times Book Review
"Uncompromising and lyrical…Liptrot’s writing is strong and sure… The Outrun is a bright addition to the exploding genre of writing about place and our place in the natural world."
"The Outrun is an astonishingly beautiful book… Her account of her addiction and recovery is electric, sexy, immediate, and raw, leaving the reader reeling in her wake. And yet she’s also elegant, thoughtful, and controlled… A luminous, life-affirming book, and I have no doubt that I’ll be pressing it into people’s hands for years to come."
2017-02-07
