Reading Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun
Amy Liptrot, The Outrun, Canongate (Edinburgh: 2018)
At points during Lockdown I caught myself thinking nostalgically about the school book cupboard. Some book cupboards can be utterly uninspiring. But what I wouldn’t have given back then to open a door, extract 30 battered and bruised copies of something (anything), and distribute them to an in-real-life class of pupils to read. I’d also been thinking about book cupboards a lot during the height of Lockdown because, traditionally, June is the time of year where English teachers start bartering with their PT for new texts for the year ahead. I always have a substantial wish list. Heading up that list is the subject of this blog: The Outrun by Amy Liptrot. This text should be in every book cupboard in the land purely because of its dazzling versatility. From the minute I cracked the spine on this text I was noting down ways that it could be used in the classroom – and not just for Senior Phase pupils.
The Outrun (2016), the debut book by Orkney-born Amy Liptrot, is a brave and honest memoir. As life writing goes, this book is impressive and clear-eyed. Throughout the course of the text the writer explains in unflinching detail her battles with alcoholism, her struggles to accept the illness, to understand it and to live with it in a sustainable way. Liptrot’s story is divided between town and city, between the bracing clifftops of Orkney and the towering multi-stories of London’s metropolis. Although clearly packaged as a memoir this text is, above all else, a lyrical and ambitious piece of nature writing. From the book’s quite claustrophobic opening (with the speaker hiding for shelter on her family’s farmland) the text opens up onto Liptrot’s dazzling Orcadian panoramic. There is no aspect of this landmass (cultural, mythical, agricultural, geographical, geological, meteorological, planetary, or tidal) that is not encompassed in Liptrot’s study of place. Indeed, human nature (the psychological) is also held up for close inspection as the writer explores mental health issues in great depth.
Since its publication, The Outrun has been critically well-received and garlanded with literary awards and nominations: Liptrot was awarded the 2016 Wainwright Prize for UK nature writing and the 2017 PEN Ackerley Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the 2016 Wellcome Prize and the 2017 Ondaatje Prize.
It is a fantastic and challenging read. If you decide to tackle the text in your classroom, where and how should you begin teaching it?
If you have a class set…
Teach The Outrun as a Critical Essay text at National 5 or Higher. The vocabulary is accessible but the story is multi-layered and thematically rich. It is also replete with techniques for candidates to analyse in their essays. The text can be used as a launchpad for the Spoken Language Unit at both levels and extracts can be used as stimuli for either Folio essay.
If you only have one departmental copy…
Use extracts as RUAE passages for Levels 1-4. Some of the experiences documented in the text are difficult or harrowing and therefore will not suit younger readers. However, there are some extraordinary passages on geology, social history, and environmental issues that younger pupils could engage with. It also seems like a fantastic text to use for an interdisciplinary project in the BGE (rope in your pals from Biology, Geography and History for that one).
If you only recommend it to one pupil…
Recommend this text to an Advanced Higher pupil looking to do a Dissertation on Scottish Nature Writing or on the Scottish Memoir.
If you want resources to support your deliver of the text…
You’ll find some in the Teaching and Learning section.