The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

I know it's only , as I write, 16 days into 2016. But, unless another book as stunning as THE OUTRUN by Amy Liptrot comes along and shifts it, I can confidently say that it will remain at the top of my best books of the year.

So what is it? Told in masterful prose, Amy's memoir or (biography so far) is about life on the extremes. In many ways, it parallels the life of many of us today, a totally happy childhood but with an undertone of her father's mental illness and her mother's Christian fundamentalism who later divorced. The parents were not from the Orkney Isles but made it their home and still remain but Amy was born there. Despite her English roots, she is a pure Orcadian.

Childhood becomes adolescence and as most young people do she longed to get away from the restrictions of her childhood that were more extreme than most of us with similar angsts. So when she got away to study and live in London, this girl of the extremes went off piste more spectacularly than most. Her life spiralled out of control spectacularly, soon gripped by the many tentacled beast of alcoholism. Many people fall in the same way but Amy's account of it is harrowing. She loses a man she loves deeply, struggles with homelessness, depending on supporting friends whom she lets down constantly. However, a core of sharp intelligence and sanity makes her attend a local authority addiction programme in East London. It means total abstinence - cold turkey - which she manages to stick to.

Having survived that she emerges, still battered, bruised and vulnerable, she chooses to continue her recovery back on the Orkney Islands. Back home, she begins to build bridged with her still separated parents and re-engage with all aspects of life from studying nature in all its manifestations - from snorkelling, walking, swimming in icy waters, bird-watching, star-gazing and delving into geology, landscape, weather, the Northern Lights, lighthouses, Norse myth and sea vessels and aircraft. You name it; she studies and observes it. Not having alcohol to support her like most of us have even in tolerable amounts, she at first shuns society. She moves from the reactively sociable life on Orkney's main island and spends a winter on the island of Papa Westray, (known to locals as Papay.) She soon begins to realise that her detailed study of all these things - all followed on-line is merely a manifestation of her own kind of mania.

Bit by bit she edges her way back into human contact. The paragraphs where she describes how a companionable young man touched her socked ankle is erotic although it goes no further. It is making connections.

If there is a theme in this wonderful book it is to explore in detail the extremes existence; all emotions from depression and mania; busy crowds and isolation whether it be flocks of birds, pods of porpoises, whales and one appearance of a walrus for a short time. It is about wild mania and the depths of despair. Never have I read a book which can explore the cliché so eloquently - that you can feel more lonely in a crowd than when on ones own.

I could go on...but you will be pleased to hear I won't. This is a book to treasure if you love books about nature at its most extreme. If you think it's cold now here on mainland Britain, then read this book and you'll never think it again. Read this book. Please.

To me, Amy Liptrot's The Outrun is the glittering treasure I picked up when idly beachcombing along the tide-line. And what a find.