The Instant
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- €8.99
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- €8.99
Publisher Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING
Wishing to leave behind the isolation of her Orkney life, Amy Liptrot books a one-way flight to Berlin. She rents a loftbed in a shared flat and starts to look for work – and for love – through the screen of her phone. The Instant tells of the momentous year that follows, encountering the city’s wildlife in the most unexpected places, tracing the cycles of the moon, the flight paths of migratory birds and surrendering to the addictive power of love and lust.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The Instant starts where Amy Liptrot’s enormously successful first memoir, The Outrun, left off. Settling into her hard-fought sobriety, the author moves from Orkney to Berlin, curious to see how she can reintegrate into urban life and whether any of it still works for her. Moving into a shared living space in a city where she does not speak the language, she finds herself vulnerable, lonely and rootless. Liptrot writes beautifully about the challenges of navigating sobriety in a society where it’s hard to connect to people without the buffering layer of alcohol and, heartbreakingly, of experiencing love and loss without being able to numb the pain. As she did on Orkney, she finds solace in the natural world, tracking goshawks through the city, observing the cycles of the moon and waking before dawn to find raccoons in the quiet urban spaces before the city wakes. Haunting and raw, this is a searingly honest, painful and lyrical reflection on life after addiction, on the intensity of lust and pain and on the jagged messiness of rebuilding oneself time after time.
