Review: Loving Frank, Nancy Horan

I picked up this novel because my son is called Frank, so how could I resist?! But what a story - I'm so glad I discovered it. Chicago in the 1900s... polite society is scandalised when the celebrated architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, runs off with a client's wife, Mamah Borthwick. The lovers leave behind ten children and two broken marriages to pursue their 'honest life', first in Europe and then at their self-built hideaway in Wisconsin. This novel is essentially Mamah's tragic story, as she is relentlessly hounded by the press for her choice to leave her family.

Behind the scenes, we see Mamah is an intellectual who masters several languages and becomes translator to Ellen Key, a Swedish feminist whose ideas fired up the women's movement. The novel asks ethical questions that are still relevant to feminists today, and I found it fascinating to pay attention to my own reaction to Mamah's life choices - not least, her crucial decision to leave her children. The author does a remarkable job in retaining sympathy for Mamah by revealing the stark choice imposed by the social limitations of her time; namely, either remain in an unhappy marriage with the children, or leave without the children.

While the first half of the novel focuses on the relationship between Mamah and Frank - and their families - the second half moves into more reflective territory. Mamah slowly realises that the lofty ideals of her feminist mentor Ellen Key are as restrictive in many ways as those of the patriarchy. Similarly, she also realises that Frank Lloyd Wright's ideal of a 'democratic' architecture is built on the unpaid toil of the lower classes. In effect, Mamah gives up everything for false prophets. But her greatest tragedy is a brutal and sudden denouement that culminates in murder, leaving a solemn aftertaste of so many wasted lives.

Review: The Witch Elm, Tana French

At the start of The Witch Elm, Toby Hennessy introduces himself by saying, “I’ve always considered myself to be, basically, a lucky person”. This is the first line of the novel, in fact, and proves to be the key to its dark heart. 

The unfolding story deconstructs that statement. It confronts Toby with the fact that - despite feeling that his life changed beyond recognition after being beaten to oblivion in the early chapters - he has always been, basically, oblivious. 

Luck? Is it really ‘luck’ that gave young, white, male, middle-class, able-bodied, straight, handsome Toby Hennessy a leg-up in life? Just dumb luck? This is a novel about power and privilege.

The story is set in the elegantly dilapidated surroundings of the Ivy House, a mansion belonging to uncle Hugo, where Toby spent childhood summers with his cousins, Susanna and Leon. At times, The Witch Elm takes on the air of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, as the three cousins meander through the pages, drinking good wine, slagging less-fortunate ‘skangers’ and philosophising at length. No-one (except uncle Hugo) is especially sympathetic and some of these sections feel directionless. 

But French has an important point to make, symbolised by the Ivy House. The cousins inhabit the same world - literally the same house - but different realities. A macabre discovery in a tree in the garden, the wych elm of the title, forces Toby to dig back into their shared and unshared past experiences. He discovers the true meaning of ‘luck’.

A departure from her Dublin Murder Squad series, Tana French once again offers a work of literary fiction that happens to feature a murder. The plot is slow moving and character led. It won’t please fans of a rapid page-turner, although sections of the novel - especially the build up to the ending - are gripping. Both frustrating and brilliant, its strength hits after the ending; rather like the giant wych elm, you only realise the magnitude and scale of the ideas after stepping away and regarding it from a distance.

Travel tips for Trump and Kim in Singapore

You may have heard a little something something about Mr Trump and Mr Kim striving for world peace in Singapore. They'll hole up in the Capella, Sentosa island, to thrash it out - this hotel is a great choice as it has a lovely spa and a long view over the Straits of Singapore. Gorgeous at night! By coincidence, my next novel is set in Singapore. The main character in The Trailing Spouse lives right there on Sentosa, one of the country's most exclusive residential areas: 

"The taxi jerked to a halt outside a waterfront condo, an apartment block fronted with black glass and marble. Someone had tried to soften the effect with fountains and orchids, but there was only so much yin an herbaceous border could bring to the yang of a forty-story phallus."

Goodness, it strikes me now that my fictional condo would be right up our world leaders' street. Or "jalan", as they say in Singapore.

Drawing on my local knowledge and snapshot collection, I thought I would write a few tips to help Mr Trump and Mr Kim get the most out of their trip - and to stay safe on the holiday paradise of Sentosa. Have a great summit!

Entrance to Sentosa

Sentosa is a tiny island off the south coast of Singapore, which you reach by driving over a short causeway. It costs $7 to enter the island - don’t forget your change, Mr Trump and Mr Kim! Or get your people to organise an Islander card so you can come and go.

Merlion

It’s a Merlion. A Merlion. Half lion, half fish. The symbol of Singapore. This is the huge one on Sentosa, but there’s another one downtown that spits a voluminous stream of water, giving rise to the local saying “doing a Merlion” to mean “vomit copiously”.

Tropical paradise

Singapore offers the four Ss in abundance - sun, sea, sand and shipping. Much has been made in the media of Sentosa’s beautiful beaches but before Mr Trump and Mr Kim throw off their kaftans and leap in, I’d just say this: there’s a lot of ships; moored right there; if you were a sailor, wouldn’t you take a tinkle over the side now and then? Just saying…

Durian

Watch out for falling durian! They’re massive and heavy and spiky. People say they either taste like heaven or hell. My advice from experience: double check that what you’ve picked off the breakfast buffet really is a piece of melon, cos durian lingers.

Beasties

This one is just for Mr Trump. We know you love Florida. LUUUURVE Florida. And you’ll probably want to play golf on Sentosa. But don’t worry - if you spot this beastie it’s not a ‘gator. Just a friendly monitor lizard. Don’t let him upset your swing.

Kopi

Right, this is important. Singapore has its own special coffee language. Here’s a handy chart so you can work out if you need to order a Kopi O or a Kopi C. Or maybe you go for a Grass Jelly. Shiok!

And relax

It must be stressful, organising world peace. If things are getting too much, and the other team have taken over the Capella Spa, I’d advise you to head to the Botanic Gardens (you’ll have to cross the causeway again, so don’t forget your $7!) and take a reflexology walk. It hurts more than a caesarian section, but totally worth it when you stop. Enjoy!

The Trailing Spouse

Once the summit is done and world peace is achieved, you can sit back with a good book and reminisce about the sights and sounds of Singapore. Did I mention that my book is set on Sentosa?

Review: Maria in the Moon, Louise Beech

Catherine is a troubled young woman. Unhappily promiscuous, traumatised after losing her home to a flood, lonely and stuck in a dead-end job, she is compelled to volunteer on a late-night advice line where she bears witness to other people's anguish. She is also an extreme insomniac and troubled by her own memories - or lack of them. Something happened in her ninth year, but what? The novel is a slow reveal of past events and the theme of flooding provides a profound parallel for her experience. Repeatedly, if unwillingly, Catherine returns to her ruined home to witness its tortured process of repair. 

"I closed my eyes. Remembered. Snow landed on my cheeks now as rain had that day. That day. we all called it That Day. That Day I'd opened the gate, causing a small wave. That Day I'd paused when brown, thigh high water wet my underwear. That Day waves had lapped at the windowsill, splashed tears against glass. It spilled into airbricks, entered though every hole and crack, uninvited, intrusive. It ruined all that I'd built, all that I had." *

Maria in the Moon is a rare treat - a novel that is stylistically sophisticated as well as intriguing enough to keep the pages turning. The characterisation is especially strong, with Catherine's caustic wit lightening the load. She's a wonderfully real and loveable character, full of contradictions - sad but funny, bleak but warm-hearted, smart but childlike. Her big reveal creeps into view with a sense of inevitability rather than surprise (for the character and the reader alike), but Louise Beech holds back a final twist for a satisfying denouement. Maria in the Moon is an impressive - and thoroughly enjoyable - modern suspense novel.

* Going back to look for this quote for the review, I'm again struck by the cleverness of this novel. I can't explain why without massive SPOILERS but this paragraph takes on deeper meaning at second reading. The fabulous sub-text reminds me of the Victorian literature I studied at uni - very clever indeed.

Review: The Tall Man, Phoebe Locke

The Tall Man takes daughters... so they say. But is he real or just an urban legend?

Back in 1990, a group of girls scare themselves silly by going into the woods looking for The Tall Man. Ten years later, one of those girls abandons a newborn baby to protect her from a curse. In a third timeline, that baby is all grown up - and a notorious killer - and we unearth her truth through the eyes of a television crew who are filming the teenager's every move.

At this stage of the review, I should confess that I don't read horror or anything supernatural because I'm a massive wimp. I have never read a Stephen King book (apart from On Writing) for the same reason - I can't because I'll never sleep again. So I started The Tall Man with some trepidation, but I needn't have worried... I didn't find it frightening. Not even spooky. It was atmospheric - especially the forest scenes - but lacked real menace.

The story is compelling, with a twist straight out of a 'true crime' show, but the tension got lost in the dense undergrowth of peripheral characters and tangled plot lines.

Review: SNAP by Belinda Bauer

On a broiling summer’s day in 1998, eleven-year-old Jack Bright and his two sisters sit in a broken-down car beside a busy road waiting for their mother who went to get help. No-one stops. No-one notices. No-one comes back.

Jump forward three years and a trio of police officers are hunting the “Goldilocks burglar” who breaks into homes and sleeps in the beds. Is he the same criminal who has left a knife and a threatening letter beside a pregnant woman’s bed?

And how does a burglar who mainly steals healthy food - "When the opportunity arose, he stole organic” - tie in with a cold case of a murdered woman from 1998?

Belinda Bauer’s razor-sharp wit and black humour always freshens my reading palate. Her plotlines and characters are decidedly quirky – even bizarre. In SNAP, a Dickensian vision of three children surviving on the fringes of modern society is touching, at times very funny, and distinctly weird. Minor characters such as "Smooth Louis Bridge", a criminal who obsessively removes his own hair, reveal the extent of her freaky imagination. But an eye for detail brings all this eccentricity back to real life.

Jack Bright’s eyes were narrow as a smoker’s and pale grey, as if all the colour had been cried out of them.

Detective Chief Inspector Marvel wasn’t one for knick-knacks but he did have an ashtray in the shape of lungs.

Belinda Bauer switches perspectives between characters without ever making it feel contrived. She somehow slides from one vivid and fleshed-out internal world to the next, puppet master-style. I love the smoothness and authority of her writing. And the profound characterisation, such as here, when the unveiled burglar reflects on his bad behaviour:

He always knew it wasn’t right, but his anger made it feel fair.

I’m a big fan of Belinda Bauer, as you might tell, although SNAP is an unusually light-hearted crime novel. I love gallows humour as much as the next swinger, but on reflection I didn’t feel much fear related to the actual killer who gets a bit lost in a crowd of cranks and crazies (the police as much as anyone else). It doesn’t matter to me, though – this book is dark, funny and heartfelt - and heroic Jack Bright and his sister's tortoise will live long in my mind.

Review: I Am Watching You, Teresa Driscoll

When Ella sees two local girls being chatted up by a pair of dodgy-looking men on the train to London, she considers intervening but decides to mind her own business. The next morning, one of the girls is missing. 

Fast forward to a year later, and we meet all those touched by the tragedy - Ella, the witness whose life has been turned upside down after being publicly shamed for 'doing nothing', the friend with survivor's guilt, the grieving father with a secret of his own... and the mysterious voice of someone obsessed with watching. But who is he watching?

Via multiple points of view, short chapters and sentences, Teresa Driscoll maintains a breathless pace and a complex plot where every character has something to hide. In the genre of quick-read, can't-put-it-down, twisty-turny domestic thriller, this one delivers to perfection.

Review: The Man I Think I Know, Mike Gayle

James de Witt and Danny Allen should be kings of the world. Instead, they are vanquished by life.

Although they came from different backgrounds, both excelled at a school that breeds statesmen, champions of industry, thought-leaders. Years later, we meet the two men in their thirties; James survived a violent attack that left him with a brain injury, and Danny is determined to self-destruct after a mysterious incident that killed his sister. 

In a last-ditch attempt to sort himself out, Danny accepts a job as a carer for James. A touching friendship of equals emerges between the two men as they help one another. Their loyalty is the strongest element in this feel-good story - and their easy humour means we are never in the doldrums even when James and Danny are at their lowest ebb.

The narrative pace slows in the final part - the magic lost when our charming pair separate to face their own challenges - and there are moments when the underlying structure shows too much on the surface (I didn't need James to keep telling me that by saving Danny he will save himself, and vice versa). But overall the distinctive voices of Mike Gayle's sympathetic characters leap off the page, and this is a sensitive and uplifting read that will appeal to fans of JoJoMoyes.

Review: Our Kind of Cruelty, Araminta Hall

From page one, it's clear that Mike is crazy about V, his sexually voracious girlfriend.

By the end of chapter one, it's clear that Mike is simply crazy and V is a young woman called Verity who is trapped in a toxic, obsessive relationship.

Both the strength and weakness of Our Kind of Cruelty was, for me, its structure as a domestic thriller; it has all the tension of the genre while simultaneously subverting the formula. However, the reader awaits twists and about-turns that never come - in this novel, what will be, will be. Nevertheless, the inevitability of events is compelling. 

This is an intelligent novel and the author has an important point to make about controlling men and the treatment of women in the criminal justice system. The fact that the novel has been tagged as a "Gillian Flynn-style" thriller - Flynn being the reigning queen of the twist - adds to an aftertaste of unresolved expectations. Perhaps more insight into Verity's thinking would have added clarity, and a little more nuance would have lifted the ending.

Our Kind of Cruelty ploughs a pitiless path, and Hall's portrayal of a man with an unravelling mind is chilling. Her accomplished writing traps us inside Mike's disturbed mind - seeing up close the twisted logic that justifies his actions - resulting in an addictive and affecting read.

Published 3 May 2018

With thanks to #NetGalley for a review copy

Review: The Darkness, Ragnar Jonasson

A novel that unflinchingly lives up to its name.

There is lightness in the sympathetic main character of Hulda Hermannsdottir, a police detective in the final days of her long and distinguished career. Her world view feels fresh to crime fiction even while it is jaded to police work.

But all else is bleak - Hulda's unwelcome retirement, the Icelandic landscape, the loneliness of a bereaved mother, the struggle of a woman in a male-dominated job, the social isolation of an older single woman. Add to that a dead refugee and a police force that doesn't much care, and the tragic story unfolds right onto the final page, with its bold final twist. 

This is the first in a series and I await the next instalment, hoping it leaves me as thoughtful as this story. The Darkness is a compelling read and Hulda is a magnetic personality, but, goodness, it's pitch black in her world.

My favourite line: "The advantage of the darkness is that there are no shadows."

With thanks to #NetGalley for a review copy

Review: The Essex Serpent

I find it tricky to review books I love as much as this one. Hard to know where to start, so I'll focus on a few elements that made this historical fiction sing to me.

The main character is Cora Seabourne, a wealthy widow who outlived a violently abusive husband and no longer Gives Any Fucks. A Victorian feminist in the tradition of Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennett, she is an awesome creation. Striding about the wilds of Essex in her hobnail boots and man’s coat (it is the condition of this coat rather than her behavior that raises eyebrows), she is driven on by a passion for paleontology. Rumours of a vicious beastie lurking in the Blackwater are too much for her to resist. 

The novel is packed with incident and drama – like a classic Victorian novel, it is full of doomed love affairs, sudden and brutal changes of fortune, and a touch of the supernatural crashing hard into religious doctrine - but it is the characters that keep pages turning. 

As well as Cora, there is a wide cast of friends and relations each of whom has a rich inner life. Sarah Perry avoids the usual depiction of Victorians as judgmental prudes, favouring a range of complex opinions and beliefs on politics and morality; much as we are now. With mentions of soldiers returning home from the war in Afghanistan and a London housing crisis, there is something pleasingly modern and relatable about this historical slice of Essex life.

Combined with the atmospheric descriptions of the landscape – a place of saltings and bladderwrack – it sparks Cora's world to vivid life.

“On turns the tilted world, and the starry hunter walks the Essex sky with his old dog at his heels.”

Singapore Writers Festival

Back in 2013, I attended a Novel-in-Progress workshop at the Singapore Writers Festival. This weekend, I was back as an author to promote the very same novel, my debut, All the Little Children. I thought I would share these author-eye images from Asia's biggest literary celebration.

Singapore Writers Festival at The Arts House

Back stage pass

With children's author Helle Norup in the festival bookshop

Motherhood panel, with Christina Sng on the mic, author Sunita Lad Bhamray and poet Grace Chia

The view from the book signing desk - JY Yang's fans

The world's hottest Moomin

Sophomore Blues - panel discussion of the tricky second novel with myself, Felicia Yap, Kirstin Chen and Caitlin Somoline, and kept in check by Darryl Whetter from LaSalle.

Kirstin Chen reading from Soy Sauce for Beginners

Felicia Yap reading from Yesterday

The view from the book signing desk - British poet Simon Armitage done for the day

Two Amazon Publishing authors catch up beside the Singapore River

Alternative entertainment - dragon boat racing right outside the venue

In the taxi queue on the way home - with a copy of my colleague Grace Chia's latest poetry collection

Unspeakably Eerie Reads for Halloween

Are you ready for Halloween? Once you've prepared a ghastly costume, decorated your lair, and cooked up finger food in the shape of... fingers, why not settle down with a book that'll scare you into next Tuesday?

I was delighted to see ALL THE LITTLE CHILDREN on a Woman's World list of mystery novels to get you in the Halloween spirit. Check out all their suggestions - if you dare!

11 Unspeakably Eerie Mystery Novels to Put You in the Halloween Spirit

These thrillers, mysteries, and horror novels will get you into the Halloween spirit. See the best mystery books to read as Oct. 31 gets near.

Book Launch: All the Little Children

It's a dream moment for every author - the book launch of their debut novel. Mine was hosted by the mighty Kinokuniya at their flagship store on Singapore's Orchard Road - the equivalent of Oxford Street or Fifth Avenue - so an exciting place to introduce my book to the world.

From my spot behind the podium, it felt a bit like a wedding as I spotted friends old and new in the crowd. I was particularly delighted to see so many fellow authors from the Singapore Writers Group, as this inspiring bunch have been staunch companions on the journey to publication.

Likewise, my "Brownies" - a critique group that emerged from a short Curtis Brown course at the Singapore Writers Festival in 2013 - were out in force. Another writer friend, the Bridport-prize winner Elaine Chiew, brilliantly compered the event.

Maybe I'm not very good at this book marketing business, but the event for me was more of a personal milestone than an opportunity to sell units - though I'm grateful to everyone who went home with a green and orange cover inside a linen tote! Several people bought a whole stack for Christmas presents, which I think is excellent planning.

People often ask what is the hardest part of writing a novel and I say "not stopping". There are so many logical reasons to stop, especially that first novel. It feels like you're running down a dark tunnel with no idea if there's a light at the end. It's an act of blind faith. I've been to so many book launches and readings and signings over the years, wondering how you get to be the one behind the table. Turns out that the hardest part is also the simplest - you don't stop writing.

On the shelf

With Elaine Chiew

My first reading

The Kinokuniya crowd

My little children

With author Lisa Beazley

Our books

Writer friend, Magali Finet

Milestone moment

With author Stephanie Chen

Organiser, Richelle Gan

Ta-dah!

In good company

Curtis Brownies

With Mark "Ace" Furniss

Review: The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

In his deservedly lauded novel, Colson Whitehead tells the story of Cora, a teenage girl who escapes from a brutal cotton plantation in Georgia where she has been enslaved all her life. Her friend, Caesar, leads Cora to the Underground Railroad.

Historically, the phrase described a network of abolitionists who aided escapees. In Colson Whitehead's fantasy, it becomes a literal railway with an unpredictable timetable and secret network of stations; a bizarre, steampunk, hellish vision of uncertainty: public transport for people with nowhere to go and no-one to trust.

Cora sets off on an Odyssey, never knowing if the mysterious railroad will deliver her somewhere better or worse than the last stop. She's told to look out of the train window to see the real America, but as her hope of finding sanctuary fades, she comes to realise a bleak truth: all she can ever see out of the window of an underground train, is more darkness.

Colson Whitehead's writing is lyrical but devoid of hyperbole. Instead he leaves you with snapshots of cruelty; I had to put the book aside for a short while after reading about a slave who was whipped for the duration of the plantation owners' dinner party, prompting his guests to amuse themselves by eating more slowly. The use of real historical 'Wanted' notices from slavers seeking run-aways makes the reader painfully aware that these snapshots could well be Polaroids from the past.

There's so much to say about this novel - theses will no doubt be written - so I have narrowed it down to three reasons why everyone should read this book.

1. The language... Colson Whitehead pulls off some kind of magic trick and I will have to re-read the novel to work out how he does it with such subtlety - the modern language is tinged with the antique. He never degenerates into broad stokes of sepia-tones or patois-laden dialect, but the historical filter is strong.

2. The genre... already an author renowned for criss-crossing genre boundaries, Colson Whitehead seamlessly incorporates his vast imagination into Cora's Odyssey. The railroad transports her to 'paradise' and hell, and each of these worlds is unique, fully-formed, and yet blends in.

3. The reality... the book has been described as magical realism or fantasy, but is steeped in realism. Cora hides in an attic in a clear allusion to Anne Frank and the holocaust. The plight of the slaves is compared to the genocide of Native Americans. Colson Whitehead makes no direct comment on modern racial politics in the US, but he doesn't need to: it's all there on the page, in black and white, for anyone with a heart to read.

A Love Letter to Switzerland

This is one of the most intimate pieces of writing I have ever shared: a love letter to Switzerland, the country that welcomed me for seven years, where my children and my novel were born. Thanks to my colleagues at The Woolf Quarterly over in Zurich for prompting me to write it: digging into the emotions that inspired a whole novel was a challenge, but cathartic!

Click...

to read my Love Letter to Switzerland on The Woolf.

BBC Interview

They say 'write what you know', and when I came to write my debut novel, All the Little Children, I wrote a location I know exceptionally well - the British West Midlands. The city of Birmingham was my home for several years, while I worked for the BBC. As a reporter, I pounded its streets and backwaters. It was there I met my husband, who comes from neighbouring Shropshire. The majority of the action in All the Little Children moves between these two contrasting landscapes - the remote forest and the urban jungle of England's second city.

When I was back in Birmingham recently, I popped in to the BBC to record this interview with my former colleague, Drivetime presenter extraordinaire, Paul Franks. Oddly enough - considering I worked in radio for such a long time - I felt nervous before the interview. But as soon as I stepped into the studio and heard Franksey's dulcet tones, I was back in the saddle!

The interview starts around 19 minutes into this playback - but why not settle down and enjoy Franksey's A-Z selection of holiday tracks?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05c3k5c

Review: The Blackbird Season, Kate Moretti

The latest gripping read from Kate Moretti starts with an eerie spectacle: thousands of dead birds fall from the sky onto the sacred ground of a small town's baseball field. It's the first act of desecration in a story that navigates the grey areas of abuse of power and defilement of trust. The panic over the birds sparks a chain of events that unravels the bonds of the whole community. Told from several points of view, the story circles around Nate Winters, a beloved teacher and baseball coach who is accused of taking too close an interest in one of his students. The languid atmosphere that Kate Moretti conjures up in her crumbling town, wilting under its poverty and summer heat, belies the pace and verve of this nail-biting suspense.

Review: Afterlife, Marcus Sakey

A unique genre-bending thriller that offers as good an explanation for the atrocities of our times as any other popular belief system. When FBI agent Will Brody is killed by a bomb while hunting a serial killer, he wakes up in the afterlife: an eerie Echo of the Chicago streets he just departed, populated by ghosts of those who also suffered violent deaths. Brody's FBI boss -- and love-of-his-life -- Claire McCoy soon hunts down the suspect; but Brody knows the killer is not what he seems. Via an excellent plot twist, Brody and McCoy are reunited, and need all their combined crime-fighting skills to face a battle of epic proportions.

Sakey's imagination is both ambitious and savvy, tapping into contemporary concerns, such as seemingly meaningless tragedies and the control that all-powerful entities hold over us. Happily, his vision is also vast enough to conceive of a female character with real guts and heart, who shares a carefully-drawn relationship of genuine respect and affection with her male work/life partner. Extra stars awarded for that!

Review: The Outrun, Amy Liptrot

It’s always a delight to read novels in situ - enjoying a work of literature while immersed in the landscape of its setting adds value to both experiences. 

My first stop on arriving in the Scottish island of Orkney was Skara Brae - a site of neolithic houses, beautifully preserved in the sand, which pre-date the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge. While sheltering from the ubiquitous Orcadian wind in the gift shop, I chanced upon treasure and gave a squeak like an archaeologist uncovering an ancient hoard: a book set here in Orkney.

A neolithic home at Skara Brae beside the Bay of Skaill.

The Outrun describes Amy Liptrot’s journey from her island home—and the kind of childhood that involved galloping on horseback across the sands behind Skara Brae—to a ten-year period of alcoholism in London, then back home to Orkney and sobriety. Rather than the misery memoir you might expect, Liptrot engages in a psychoanalysis of Orkney itself. The Outrun is a detailed, beautiful and compelling paean to the place that made, broke and healed her.

The book is full of curiosities: such as the time a storm washed a seal clean over a fence. Or the fact that schools prevent the smallest children from playing outside in high winds for fear they will blow away. And the kindly neighbour who delivered a third of a cabbage to her isolated house because she’d complained that a whole vegetable for too large for a single person.

The North Sea from the Broch of Birsay, Orkney Mainland

Sometimes, it’s hard to know where Orkney ends and Amy begins. Time and again, she frames herself, her illness (and that of her father who is bipolar), in terms of the landscape; glorious and deeply meaningful metaphors about tides, migratory birds, geology. At the start, she says: ‘I was born into the continual, perceptible crashing of sea at the edges’. By the end of the book: ‘I’m realising that times of anxiety are necessary and unavoidable and, in any case, I like the edge: it’s where I get the best ideas. The edge is where I’m from.’

The Outrun started as a column and the later chapters occasionally fall into a episodic pattern that suggests a compilation of articles rather than a continuous narrative. But Liptrot’s elegant prose, acute observations and straightforward honesty carry this memoir about life lived in the wild.