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erebus53's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
As a "travel memoir" written by a journalist this is an offering with a little more personal journey than most. Raised in the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland, but with British parents, the author has always felt like she doesn't really belong in her home community. Dealing with a religiously zealous mother and a father who has an ongoing battle with mental illness she is dead keen to leg it to the South, and reinvent herself, but when she gets to London things are not exactly the escape she had planned.
Ultimately this is a story about one woman's struggle with alcoholism, rehab, trying to navigate the 12-Step as an Atheist, and finding a life beyond the drink. Having lost a string of jobs, relationships, places to live and then eventually running afoul of the law, she realises that she needs to move past that decade she's not getting back, and make positive lifelong changes.
Her stories of erratic party nights and vagrant meanderings felt real and resonant to me. Having spent my first year away from home in a city that was new to me, as a neurodivergent youth who had been barely surviving in high school, I finally had my first chance to be a teenager, to have friends, and to find out what I liked. Looking at how badly wrong it could have gone I am thankful that I never really got into drink or drugs in any serious way (not that I would have had the money for it). I was poor and I made my own fun. I was one of those goths that apparently the inebriated party girls thought looked mysterious and exotic.
In the British journalistic fashion, this is a story full of documentary asides, information and history of places, and wildlife. Here's me charging off to rabbit-hole videos of corn crakes, and looking up photographs of fulmars and geos...
This ties in nicely to the idea of "getting back to nature" which is almost cliché by now, but makes some good sense in getting real, in a world that is much bigger than you. It's humbling and well worth gratitude and awe. Working for Bird Protection, hill walking, shore foraging, sea swimming, having a mission, stopping to gape at clouds and atmospheric lights, seeking novelty and sensory stimulation, and listening to rousing music, all seem to help ground this woman who is in constant motion.
But even in this finding-her-roots downtime, it doesn't really stop her making impulsive decisions, or taking risk. She starts to come up with her own theories for where she went wrong, and I really hope they help her.. but if you're reading this and strongly relate, and would consider clinical assistance helpful, please consider getting an assessment for ADHD.. because she's a textbook case.
I'm going to own my biases here, because I know arm-chair diagnosis annoys people, but after having lived with SO many people with this sort of pattern of action and sensation-seeking (and parenting a couple while I'm at it) it's just so familiar that I think it's important to mention.
Ultimately this is a story about one woman's struggle with alcoholism, rehab, trying to navigate the 12-Step as an Atheist, and finding a life beyond the drink. Having lost a string of jobs, relationships, places to live and then eventually running afoul of the law, she realises that she needs to move past that decade she's not getting back, and make positive lifelong changes.
Her stories of erratic party nights and vagrant meanderings felt real and resonant to me. Having spent my first year away from home in a city that was new to me, as a neurodivergent youth who had been barely surviving in high school, I finally had my first chance to be a teenager, to have friends, and to find out what I liked. Looking at how badly wrong it could have gone I am thankful that I never really got into drink or drugs in any serious way (not that I would have had the money for it). I was poor and I made my own fun. I was one of those goths that apparently the inebriated party girls thought looked mysterious and exotic.
In the British journalistic fashion, this is a story full of documentary asides, information and history of places, and wildlife. Here's me charging off to rabbit-hole videos of corn crakes, and looking up photographs of fulmars and geos...
This ties in nicely to the idea of "getting back to nature" which is almost cliché by now, but makes some good sense in getting real, in a world that is much bigger than you. It's humbling and well worth gratitude and awe. Working for Bird Protection, hill walking, shore foraging, sea swimming, having a mission, stopping to gape at clouds and atmospheric lights, seeking novelty and sensory stimulation, and listening to rousing music, all seem to help ground this woman who is in constant motion.
But even in this finding-her-roots downtime, it doesn't really stop her making impulsive decisions, or taking risk. She starts to come up with her own theories for where she went wrong, and I really hope they help her.. but if you're reading this and strongly relate, and would consider clinical assistance helpful, please consider getting an assessment for ADHD.. because she's a textbook case.
I'm going to own my biases here, because I know arm-chair diagnosis annoys people, but after having lived with SO many people with this sort of pattern of action and sensation-seeking (and parenting a couple while I'm at it) it's just so familiar that I think it's important to mention.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcohol, Drug use, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, Car accident, Child death, Drug abuse, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Alcoholism, Racism, Sexual assault, Suicide, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Vomit, Animal death, and Rape
Minor: Colonisation
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