Ootlin by Jenni Fagan

I’ve been a fan of Jenni Fagan’s writing since her 2018 debut novel, The Panopticon, was published. Reading her memoir, Ootlin, it’s hard not to draw parallels between the central Panopticon character, Anais Hendricks, and Jenni Fagan herself; both fizz with intelligence, both born into a care system which is anything but. Ootlin is an intensely personal book (which began as a suicide note). It’s distressing and vital; vividly written, poetic, brutal. I was completely absorbed and horrified and sad, yet it’s a page-turner despite being a hard read. We follow Fagan from birth through a childhood spent in a succession of foster homes. There is so much cruelty. So much. It’s unbearable. I’m in awe of the absolute strength and skill it must have taken to write this book. Knowing that Fagan is an artist and writer with a successful career was the much-needed light guiding me through. What a life she has endured. What a triumph her survival in spite of it all is.

“…what we are living through is not a thrill, it’s not a story, it’s not a buzz, it’s not a joke, it’s not gossip, it is not a story that other people tell, it’s not words on a file or spoken in the kid’s court, it is a dense thud of silence when we walk in a room, it is not a bet someone will never win, it’s ambulance doors swallowing me overdosed at twelve years old and ready to die because of what I have already lived through – it is real – we are trying to survive the unsurvivable and none of it is stacked in our favour and it is all totally against us.”