The same technology that allows my lifestyle – the flexibility, the short-term, the instant – also enables me to be detached and uncommitted. The excitement and adventure of travel is the draw, but the lack of something substantial (in the form of relationships, mortgages, roots, stability) is a recurrent catch in the narrative: The internet is a gift for Liptrot, and other nomadic individuals like her who can work from wherever they choose – floating from one place to another on a whim. It seemed to have existed only digitally, on the screen of my internet-enabled device.Īlthough the author acknowledges that the spiritual world has long been associated with the sacred stone circle, she draws a more direct comparison with the spectres who haunt the digital landscape, searching for meaning in a world that exists and thrives on the fleeting nature of things. But when I lifted my eyes, the figure was not there. I lifted my phone to take a photograph of the standing stones silhouetted against the sunrise and, on the camera screen, a dark figure was moving across the heather at the centre of the circle.

I was walking around a Neolithic stone circle on the island, in the early hours, at the first light of dawn. When we exist solely online, how do we know that we are alive at all? As Liptrot recalls: However, though it is sometimes forthright to the point that it can be uncomfortable, Amy Liptrot’s exploration of love, lust and loneliness in Berlin may seem simple at first but, like the city itself, has worlds hiding beneath every word.Īt its heart, The Instant is a book about the search for human connection in the modern world. In a city famous for its nightlife, I’ve been waking up early to look for birds of prey.įollowing on from the success of her debut novel The Outrun – a deeply personal memoir that explored the author’s return to her roots in Orkney after years spent struggling with addiction – the stakes were high for The Instant.

The outrun amy liptrot review