Audiobook Review: The Outrun, by Amy Liptrot

Well, I meant to post on Saturday. And I mean to get a blog post ready for Marvelous Middle Grade Monday. I miss all those deadlines because I just got tired, and distracted. You can enjoy this audiobook review of Amy Liptrot's memoir whenever I manage to finish it.  

 

Title: The Outrun: A Memoir
Author:  Amy Liptrot; read by Tracy Wiles
Publication Info: Canongate Books, 2023, 7 hours. Original hardback 2016 by Canongate, 280 pages.

Publisher's Blurb: 
At the age of thirty, Amy Liptrot finds herself washed up back home on Orkney. Standing unstable on the island, she tries to come to terms with the addiction that has swallowed the last decade of her life. As she spends her mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, her days tracking Orkney's wildlife, and her nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Amy discovers how the wild can restore life and renew hope. 

My Review:
This one didn't turn out to be quite what I expected. The blurb made me think it would have more of the landscape of the Orkney Islands and less of the things that took her there.

Amy Liptrot didn't go to the Orkneys because she wanted to escape to the farthest reaches of the British Isles--she went because she grew up there. She went home when she had reached a point where she needed "the place where when you go there, they have to take you in." It was her parents who moved from England to the Orkney Islands before she was born, which still meant that she was something of an outsider. You don't get to be a local in a place like that in a single generation.

At times in this narration I was confused about timelines, but the basic shape is there: Liptrot grew up and couldn't wait to get off the island (having grown up myself on an island where the goal of most of us was to "get off the rock" I get it). Unfortunately, student life in London fed the alcoholism she'd already gotten a start on as a high school student. Before she was 30, she'd pretty much made a shambles of her life.

For me, that trajectory was too painful and took up too much of the book. But once she retreats to the islands and starts doing what the blurb describes, the book becomes something else, even beautiful. 

The narrator does a very good job, but some American listeners may have issues with her accent. Stick with it a bit and your head will sort it out.

My Recommendation:
I'd say this one is more for readers wanting a story of a fall and redemption than those looking (as I was) for a book about the wonders of the islands. 

 

FTC Disclosure: I checked The Outrun out of the library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  

 

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2026 

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