There she lands the first in a series of publishing jobs, falls blisteringly in love, and embarks on a turbulent ten-year affair with the bottle. The daughter of a manic depressive and a born-again Christian, Liptrot's parents settled on the mainland island before she was born, and the young Liptrot comes of age on a wild, wind-swept farm whose furthest untamed reaches the outrun of the title become her refuge.ĭesperate to escape as a teenager, she eventually makes her way to London where she settles in Clapton, a dark pocket of Hackney. The Outrun is part-memoir, part travelogue, part apology and part love letter to the islands that begat her. In this unflinching debut, Amy Liptrot journeys like a modern day Viking to her birthplace in the Orkneys in a quest to both ground and heal herself. Though the book club will exist in a digital sphere we hope that youwill add your own opinions and thoughts below.* The book we have begun with is The Outrun by Amy Liptrot.

We met Betsy Tobin, the joint founder,and together we concocted the premise for the TOAST Book Club - a series of monthly reviews, written by the bookshop team and published on the last Friday of each month. The scene that greeted us was one of literary glee - floor to ceiling bookcases and a small cafe, for whiling away the reading hours. Just up the road from TOAST head office, situated in leafy Highbury, is a small, independent bookshop called Many of us pass it on our daily commute and a few months ago we decided to go in.

The outrun amy liptrot summary