What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in October
Audiobook of the week
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot review – brutal yet poignant account of life on the edge
September 2024
The Outrun review – Saoirse Ronan impresses in a refreshingly unconventional recovery drama
The actor excels as an alcoholic who returns to Orkney in Nora Fingscheidt’s fine adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoir
The Outrun review – Saoirse Ronan is mesmerising in sobering addiction drama
Heart-wrenching story adapted from Amy Liptrot’s memoir is as tough as its Orkney landscapes
The Outrun: My real life as an alcoholic, played out on the big screen
The film version of the best-selling memoir ably blurs the lines between fact and fiction of recovering on the tiny isle of Papay
August 2024
Edinburgh festival theatre 2024: The Fifth Step; The Outrun; I Wish You Well; Gwyneth Goes Skiing – review
Jack Lowden and Sean Gilder compel in David Ireland’s crackling new AA drama
‘Actors are strange animals’: Jack Lowden of Slow Horses on playing an alcoholic and working with his new wife, Saoirse Ronan
The Scottish star talks about his forthcoming role in David Ireland’s new play in Edinburgh – and why making an Irn Bru ad counts as national service
The Outrun review – ambitious staging of Amy Liptrot’s Orkney addiction memoir
Vicky Featherstone’s directing and Isis Hainsworth’s fine lead turn valiantly blur the wild and the urban to portray the writer’s introspective journey to sobriety
May 2023
Top 10s
Top 10 books about connecting with nature
Science, memoir, fiction and poetry all point us towards the urgent truth that humans and nature are part of each other – and under threat
March 2022
The Instant by Amy Liptrot review – an intimate Berlin memoir
The Scottish author’s follow-up to her Wainwright prize-winning The Outrun is more contemplative, with flashes of grit and humour
February 2022
The Instant by Amy Liptrot review – in Berlin, looking for love and raccoons
After battling alcoholism in her bestselling memoir The Outrun, the author is now sober and seeking intimacy in this highly relatable sequel
Amy Liptrot: ‘I wanted to put the sex into nature writing’
Her bestselling debut, The Outrun, told of finding solace on Orkney after a hedonistic decade in London. Now, having briefly been drawn back to city life, she is exploring our animal instincts
I left the wilds of Orkney for a new life in Berlin. Could I find a lover – and a raccoon?
In an extract from her new memoir, nature writer Amy Liptrot tries to cure her heartbreak with online dating and a hunt for the capital’s elusive creatures
