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How I wrote it: Jenni Fagan on Luckenbooth

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Independent Bookshop Week: Penguin authors celebrate their favourites

Luckenbooth

One of the most stunning literary experiences I've had in years. LUCKENBOOTH, sprawling the decades with its themes of repression and revenge, brings back something that has long been lacking in the British novel: ambition. If Alasdair Gray's Lanark was a masterly imagining of Glasgow, then this is the quintessential novel of Edinburgh at its darkest.

It's extraordinary. Make sure it's on your radar ... Definitely going to be one of my books of 2021, a gloriously transgressive novel of Edinburgh denizens past and present.

Over time, 10 Luckenbooth Close sinks from grand residence to condemned squat with secrets seething in its walls ... Luckenbooth is a place of compacted time, where the past manifests as unquiet ghosts and the future bleeds into the present ... There's a force in Luckenbooth's bizarre assemblage.

With Luckenbooth, [Jenni Fagan] gives us nine of Edinburgh's wildest and loneliest misfits ... Piles on claustrophobia and menace ... As we move between the characters' perspectives, gritty realism takes over from the gothic. This isn't fancy Edinburgh: at No 10 it's cigarettes, cocaine and Benzedrine for breakfast ... There are memorable creations ... Fagan's prose is poetic, high-octane, built on punchy sentences. Arresting descriptions of the city and its weather abound. This is not a novel that lacks energy.

Jenni Fagan's Luckenbooth reminded me of one of my favourite novels, Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual. Set in an Edinburgh tenement, it leaps across decades to tell the story of the curse that haunts No 10 Luckenbooth Close and its eccentric inhabitants.

An audacious statement and a terrific read.

A deeply powerful, compellingly vivid novel ... LUCKENBOOTH is a major work of Scottish fiction - possibly one of the most significant novels of the last ten years ... [A] forceful work of fiction to energize a somewhat diffuse, uncertain and often self-congratulatory fictional landscape ... What is so significant about the novel is its instinctive, vatic, lyrical, occult power ... A poetic novel which reverberates and pulses in its own universe and on its own terms.

A whirlwind of a novel, and I am certain that various labels will be attached to it - Caledonian magic realism, tartan gothic, something nasty in the shortbread tin, Angela Carter in a kilt cross-hatched with safety pins. What it is, is radical and profoundly fabulist. It is about the stories we are told and whether there is the possibility of there being new stories ... There is a great deal of imagination and empathy at work here. The structure of the building acts as a kind of framework to contain the pent-up furies ... Luckenbooth is a daring book, and beautifully written.

Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan is the queer witchy revenge horror I had no idea I needed. Every word perfectly chosen. Absolutely outstanding writing, stretching through nine decades, with a soul as back as the centuries of soot on an Old Town brick.

From its arresting beginning, in which the Devil's pregnant daughter rows into the Scottish capital to conclude a deal, to its dark, cathartic ending, Fagan's third novel exerts a powerful grip.

Luckenbooth is an ode to Edinburgh's crumbling Old Town, but as ever with Fagan the supernatural underlies everything within its pages. It would be easy for a novel like this to feel disjointed, but the sense of place and the presence of something other throughout make the transitions of time and character effortless. No 10. Luckenbooth Close itself may be the novel's beating heart, but something darkly mystical flows through its veins.

Structures and structuralism obsess Jenni Fagan. Those obsessions intertwine spectacularly in Luckenbooth, her third novel, about an Edinburgh tenement and the curse that haunts it, infecting the lives of all who live across the building's nine floors over nine decades of mystery and uproarious change ... Melding the poetic, the esoteric and the occult with the grit and grime of a real life lived on the edge, she writes unlike any other author of her generation, in no small part because she has lived a life unlike any other author.

If this addictive slice of Edinburgh Gothic isn't on all prize lists, there is no justice.

Luckenbooth is seedy, sexy and strange, a haunted house story soaked in booze and bad weather ... Fagan's prose is fast and impressionistic.

Luckenbooth, the third novel from the bracingly good Scottish writer Jenni Fagan, defies any sort of neat description ... Fagan switches effortlessly between dreamy prose and a more dynamic style ... Fagan is unflinching in her depictions of derangement and death but Luckenbooth is compelling and often darkly funny ... Her storytelling has an urgency and - to use an overused but apt word - authenticity. That is not to say that the work is "gritty" or "down-to-earth": there is a fantastical bent to this writing, and the authenticity is in the feelings, in the way the characters' stories are propelled forward and told with respect.

Luckenbooth, is driven by a slower-burning rage that set in four years ago ... But if Number 10 Luckenbooth is intimate with hell, it has also known gaiety ... With its mixture of the physical and the spectral, of historical characters and fictitious ones, the novel is a psychogeographical portrait of Edinburgh itself, as perceived by a writer who has loved it since she first arrived there ... In common with her two previous novels, Luckenbooth holds close to its heart characters who are socially and sexually marginalised.

Like all great Gothic works, Luckenbooth deals in duality: good/evil, light/dark ... Fagan comes at Edinburgh like a voracious lover, eager to explore both its conspicuous beauty and its secret places ... Fagan's writing sparkles most when she is describing landscape ... Luckenbooth is a horror story, originally and beautifully told.

[Fagan's] sinuous, supernatural story unwinds down nine decades ... Her narrative weaves between the real and the spirit world.

Luckenbooth is a compulsive study of our entanglement with place and each other. Brimming with character, subversion and decadence, Fagan builds a striking portrait of the Scottish city's deep-seated repression and toxicity and the grand strength of its inhabitants as they push the city into a modern age. An exhilarating, courageous story of the need to expose the evils of our communal past, Luckenbooth is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Brilliantly strange ... From the start, Luckenbooth gives the feel of a legend or fairy story ... Time periods slip about, gleefully penetrating one another. A multistorey horror story reveals itself obliquely in fragments across a number of years and viewpoints, weirdly paced, the action rushed and breathless, generalised, then freezing for a moment on an unexpected scene or event ... Everyone in the novel is a chimera of one sort or another, caught between forms, illuminated from inside by the light of their own unkempt ideas and desires ... Fagan's booth of stories - her Cornell box of frenzies, tragedies and delights - offers the present moment in the endless war between love and capital. It's brilliant.

Masterly ... A lesser writer would struggle to control this cacophony of voices but what marks out Luckenbooth is the fierce intelligence driving Fagan's tale ... This is a mad god's dream of a book - it deserves to be shortlisted for every prize going this year.

Impossible to adequately describe this extraordinarily inventive novel. You'll just have to read it yourself. Early days, I know, but suffice to say this one's already heading for my books of the year list together with both my Women's Prize for Fiction and Booker Prize wish lists.

One of the hottest titles right now, Jennie Fagan's Luckenbooth has won all round acclaim.

The novel unfolds like a set of dark short stories, with a different character narrating or guiding each one. But there's a twist: Luckenbooth is not just haunted by the realities of time and history, but also by the strong musk of the gothic imagination ... Thickly worked and carefully assembled, the novel functions as a claustrophobic chiller and as a testament to lives led beyond the margins and in the shadows.

Luckenbooth ... is littered with lines like this. The sort of lines that demand to be read and reread: splendid in isolation, electric in combination. Fagan writes with drama. She can pick out the fine detail, in neat brush strokes, no doubt, but it is in drawing her arm back and attacking a story with great, sweeping lyricism that she propels Luckenbooth forward, dragging the reader through the 20th century, as experienced by a compelling cast of characters.

Slips and slides through layers of history, tears in the fabric of time and a series of strange shape shifting characters - it's a wonderful work that is a trip into a spectral interzone but also staged in a warped reality - great writing and a major talent.

A novel for readers with sophisticated tastes.

Uniquely gripping visions of the hidden social, economic and spiritual forces at play in 20th-century Edinburgh.

As sexy and horrifying as any fairy story, it is a book concerned, not only with a structure, but with structures: alphabetical, architectural, societal, what they are built upon and how they crumble

Prize-winning author Jenni Fagan does not disappoint with her latest novel, Luckenbooth, which is easily her most compelling yet. In her usual poetic style, Fagan tells of a nine-storey Edinburgh tenement just off the Royal Mile that is creaking with secrets. Throughout this haunting novel, characters' secrets and memories live on in the howling gales of the spirit world, desperate to re-enter their lives. The narrative takes us through eight decades - from 1910 to 1999 - working its way up all nine floors of the building in hopscotch fashion, allowing for an intriguing interpretation of 20th-century life in the capital. Prepare to be transported into a Fagan's weird and wonderful imagination. It is a whirlwind read and one that I could not put down until the final page had turned.

As sexy and horrifying as any fairy story, it is a book concerned, not only with a structure, but with structures: alphabetical, architectural, societal, what they are built upon and how they crumble.

An Edinburgh tenement building is haunted by tall stories and unnerving strangers, from William Burroughs to the devil's daughter, in this weird and wonderful gothic confection.

Her "world building" is highly effective, and each character fully inhabits their decade. Fagan's writing is anchored in societal issues, the wrongs done and the ways individuals have challenged those wrongs and asserted their individuality and sexuality in ways that might make them seem misfits, outcasts. Fagan certainly pulls no punches and is determined that these passionate, authentic stories should not be confined to the periphery.

An ambitious and ravishing novel that will haunt me long after

Jenni Fagan was born in Scotland. Jenni was selected as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists after the publication of her debut novel, The Panopticon, which was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the James Tait Black Prize. The Sunlight Pilgrims, her second novel, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award and the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award and saw her win Scottish Author of the Year at the Herald Culture Awards. Luckenbooth was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2021. Jenni Fagan is a Doctor of Philosophy, she lives in Edinburgh with her son.

ONE OF GRANTA MAGAZINE'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE FOR FICTION, THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE FOR THE PANOPTICON and THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2021 
 
'One of the most stunning literary experiences I've had in years' Irvine Welsh 
 
'Dazzlingly ambitious' Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain 
 
'A gloriously transgressive novel' Ian Rankin 
 
1910, Edinburgh. Jessie, the devil's daughter, arrives on the doorstep of an imposing tenement building and knocks on a freshly painted wooden door. She has been sent by her father to bear a child for a wealthy couple, but, when things go wrong, she places a curse on the building and all who live there - and it lasts a century. 
 
Caught in the crossfire are the residents of 10 Luckenbooth Close, and they all have their own stories to tell. While the world outside is changing, inside, the curse creeps up all nine floors and through each door. Soon, the building's longest kept secret - the truth of what happened to Jessie - will finally be heard.

The Sunlight Pilgrims

From the highly acclaimed author of The Panopticon and one of Granta’s Best Young British Writers comes the new novel THE SUNLIGHT PILGRIMS.

[A] vivid and tender coming-of-age story set at the end of the world . . . For all its coldness and darkness, The Sunlight Pilgrims is ultimately a hopeful book – and for a novel that describes the end of the world, that is quite a feat.

Fagan received widespread acclaim for her 2012 debut The Panopticon, and was named as one of the prestigious Granta Best of Young British Novelists a year later. The Sunlight Pilgrims further cements Fagan’s reputation as a writer of skill and depth, a book that shares a similar outsider charm to its predecessor, and one that delves deep into how we relate to others on a human level in the face of all the crap that life throws at us … The author also, it should be said, writes like the poet that she is, with an original eye for description, a wonderful rhythm to her prose, and some genuinely inspiring and unusual characters. An impressive read.

The Sunlight Pilgrims evokes a chillingly plausible near-future . . . intimately imagined.

Fagan’s vivid, poetic-prose style injects the book with energy. She writes at the pace of thought, sentences like gunfire … She has a poet's affection for precision and image.

Fagan is drawn to those who exist on the outer reaches, and in The Sunlight Pilgrims it is in the literal margins where a broader and yet more refined collection of voices is drawn together … The Sunlight Pilgrims is about the confluence of characters searching to fill the gaps in their lives … In the transgender 11-year-old Stella we have an engaging protagonist whose isolation is mental, physical and geographical, yet who is imbued with a survivalist’s steely resolve ... Indeed, it is somewhere between Alan Warner and Iain Banks that Fagan’s storytelling ability sits, the grit of her familial backstories and dysfunctional relationships dusted with the glitter of magical realism ... In heightened poetic prose, Fagan does for rural Scottish fiction what Kathleen Jamie is doing in poetry and Amy Liptrot in non-fiction: evocatively documenting the ever-changing daily drama of the landscape … This is a novel about summoning hidden strengths and finding one’s place in a universe defined by chaos.

Fagan …explores some big ideas; namely the environment, gender and familial structure.  She addresses these themes with an infectious, otherworldly hilarity, assembling an eccentric cast of characters who triumphantly flout convention.

It was with a degree of trepidation that I opened her new novel, The Sunlight Pilgrims, wondering if it would bear the weight of expectation. Thankfully, it does. It has the same combination of the weird and the all too real: the same concern for the marginal and the disposed. But it plays for higher stakes, and reaps greater rewards . . . I cannot wait to see what she does next.

As soon as I read the other-worldly first sentence of Jenni Fagan’s The Sunlight Pilgrims, with its poetic rhythm and sense of impending doom, I had a feeling this was going to be something special . . . I devoured the rest of the poet and author’s beautiful and strange second novel . . . With poignant reminder of not just the fragility of human emotions but of life itself, The Sunlight Pilgrims is a novel about connecting with others . . . [it] tackles current issues with a haunting, timeless beauty.

Fagan is brilliant at creating empathy in the reader for her complex and uncompromising characters, so The Sunlight Pilgrims promises to be an emotional ride.

In haunting prose Fagan creates a credible apocalyptic landscape and articulates the survival instinct and our capacity for love.

It’s littered with that same sparkle: misery and fear and awe and joy all co-exist, and that’s what makes Fagan stand out… Big thumbs up. Beauty and horror, love and death, ice and light – what a package! While eschewing huge plotlines, Fagan still gives us a rattling story, and if this is how the world ends, there’d be much worse ways to go than in the company of Stella and her cohort in the Fells.

The Sunlight Pilgrims is full of the music of life and language … This is a novel that, with its vision of climate crisis and mass migration, couldn’t feel more of the moment.

It’s a wonderfully odd tale, beautifully told.

[A] remarkably accomplished and enjoyable piece of work. Here is a book that draws you into the lives of fascinating, intriguing characters facing truly exceptional circumstances.

Fagan’s writing has a remarkably poetic quality when she describes scenes of tremendous emotional conflict …beautifully moving …Fagan is equally skilful at writing punchy dialogue …The Sunlight Pilgrims is a beautifully written and chilling vision of the future with refreshingly original characters.

Jenni writes with such great understanding and insight …this book should be required reading for teens and adults alike … I defy anyone not to shed a silent tear or two before the story finishes.

It's November 2020 and the world is freezing over. As ice water melts into the Atlantic, and vast swathes of people make for the warmer south, Dylan is heading to Scotland, once the home of his late mother and grandmother. 
 
Twelve-year-old Stella and her survivalist mother, Constance, scrape by in the snowy Highlands, preparing for a record-breaking winter. Living out of a caravan, they spend their days digging through landfills, searching for anything of value. When Dylan arrives in the middle of the night, their lives change course. Though the weather worsens, his presence brings a new light to daily life, and when the ultimate disaster finally strikes, they'll all be ready.

The Panopticon

JENNI FAGAN HAS BEEN NAMED AS ONE OF GRANTA MAGAZINE'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2013 
 
The Panopticon is a bold, shocking and heartbreaking story of a young girl in a care home 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE FOR FICTION AND THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2013 
 
NAMED ONE OF THE 50 BEST SCOTTISH BOOKS OF THE LAST 50 YEARS BY THE SCOTSMAN

It’s in the Margaret Atwood/The Handmaid’s Tale vein – very literary and suspenseful…Set in an altered reality – one that feels familiar and yet deeply unfamiliar, that embodies some of the dailiness of life, and yet slowly reveals itself to be a very different, much more sinister place.

Each page sparkles with the ebullient and sinister magic of great storytelling ... An utterly magnificent achievement.

Not just uncompromising and courageous. I think it's one of the most cunning and spirited novels I've read for years... An intelligent and deeply literary novel.

Written with great verve and brio ... An astonishing debut, I have a feeling that Fagan is a name we will hear more of.

The 15-year-old heroine and narrator, has a rough, raw, joyous voice that leaps right off the page and grabs you by the throat…This punkish young philosopher is struggling with a terrible past, while battling sinister social workers…The glorious Anais is unforgettable.

It is the most assured and intriguing first novel by a Scottish writer that I have read in a decade, a book which is lithely and poetically written, politically and morally brave and simply unforgettable. ... As a debut, The Panopticon does everything it should. It announces a major new star in the firmament.

Jenni Fagan is the real thing, and The Panopticon is a real treat: maturely alive to the pains of maturing, and cleverly amused as well as appalled by what it finds in the world.

An indictment of the care system, this dazzling and distinctive novel has at its heart an unstoppable heroine…Fagan’s prose is fierce, funny and brilliant at capturing her heroine’s sparky smartness and vulnerability…Emotionally explosive.

Ferocious and devastating, The Panopticon sounds a battle-cry on behalf of the abandoned, the battered, and the betrayed. To call it a good novel is not good enough: this is an important novel, a book with a conscience, a passionate challenge to the powers-that-be. Jenni Fagan smashes every possible euphemism for adolescent intimacy and adolescent violence, and she does it with tenderness and even humour. Hats off to Jenni Fagan! I will be recommending this book to everyone I know.

Reminiscent of Girl, Interrupted…The novel is as bold, shocking and intelligent as its central character…The institutional details (magnolia walls, screwed-down chairs) anchor The Panopticon in realism, giving it a greater bite. Much of Anais’ life is the stuff of tabloid shock stories and The Panopticon’s strength lies in giving you an insight into the lonely, damaged girl behind the headlines…This week’s winner.

[a] confident and deftly wrought debut…[Anais’] voice is compellingly realised.

Fagan's writing is taut and controlled and the dialogue crackles.

[The narrator] is engagingly drawn by Fagan, who has created a character possessed of intellectual curiosity and individual quirks…Written with great verve…Fagan has a clear voice, an unflinching feel for the complexity of the teenage mindset, and an awareness of the burden we impose on children…What’s intriguing here – particularly in a Scottish fiction landscape that can display too much of the plodding everyday – is her effort to lift the story of teen misadventure into a heightened realm of intellectual aspiration and quasi-sci-fi notions of sinister social change.

Fagan is writing about important stuff: the losers, the lonely, most of them women…[Anais] maintains a cool, smart, pretty, witty and wise persona.

one of the most revelatory debut novels from a Scottish author in some time.

Fagan’s writing is astonishing... On the strength of this book, Fagan more than deserves her place on the recent Granta list of young British novelists. She’s a major talent whose work should be widely recognised. The Panopticon is a weird, gorgeous, utterly unplaceable work of fiction that’s hilarious, uplifting, dirty and real. I fell in love with it from the first page and then struggled for weeks to put my feelings about it into words.

Fagan’s novel peers into the world inhabited by forgotten children, and, in Anais, gives us a heartbreakingly intelligent and sensitive heroine wrapped in an impossibly impenetrable exterior. Readers won’t be able to tear themselves away from this transcendent debut.

this book is as warm as it is bone-chilling… This amazing book manages to be both a condemnation of all that is wrong in our society and the care system in particular, and a wonderful testament to a person’s will to live a better life, all at the same time. It is no surprise that Jenni Fagan was included in Granta’s list of twenty most promising British authors under the age of 40. If she can bring her clear voice and wonderful storytelling skills to future books, Jenni Fagan is one writer we will be hearing a lot more about in years to come.

If you're asking which book I most admire I would say The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan. A true literary masterpiece. The story of a girl in care with wild dreams. Funny, heartbreaking, heart-expanding, everything.

JENNI FAGAN HAS BEEN NAMED AS ONE OF GRANTA MAGAZINE'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2013 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE FOR FICTION AND THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2013 
 
'One of the most cunning and spirited novels I've read for years' Ali Smith 
 
'An utterly magnificent achievement' Irvine Welsh 
 
Fifteen-year old Anais Hendricks is smart, funny and fierce, but she is also a child who has been let down, or worse, by just about every adult she has ever met. Sitting in the back of a police car, she finds herself headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders where the social workers are as suspicious as its residents. But Anais can't remember the events that have led her there, or why she has blood on her school uniform...

Jenni Fagan

With punchy prose and a harrowing story of staggering resilience and fortitude, Fagan's memoir should be required reading

A phenomenal memoir. I am in awe. It takes exceptional strength to survive the events described in this book and courage, skill and magic to write a life story, especially when this type of story is often marginalised

A clear-eyed, unsentimental account of the author's childhood being shuffled between foster homes. Her resilience is remarkable. It's a book that really made me want to reach through the pages and help

An astonishing piece of work. I tore through it, and it through me. I will never, ever forget it

Ootlin is a 21st century classic from one of our most exceptional writers

Heartbreaking, magnificent, and incredibly important . . . [Jenni Fagan] is one of the best

A terrifying descent into a childhood of an un-looked-after child, growing up and expected to make sense of a senseless system

Here, there suffering becomes chords and strains, refrains and melodies, and we feel the chills that come with being touched by the poetry of pain. But we owe it to Jenni, and the many she will invigorate with her story, not to look away. The push and pull of the prose perfectly mimics the life conveyed in the pages, bringing us close enough to understand why she must turn away. Jenni is composed in her candour, though this is a memoir that goes beyond honesty, and to attempt to describe the soul of this book is to diminish its power

Beautiful, deep, dangerous, transfixing . . . it will burn a home in your heart, it has in mine. Read every word of every page. Turn them carefully. Jenni Fagan is made of fire and spirit. From start to finish I could not put it down. Close the door. Sit down now. Read Ootlin. Read

This is essential reading, life changing, I couldn't stop reading once I started. All day and all night. The world had to stop whilst I stayed with little Ootlin. The poetic nature with which Jenni has written about her childhood is mind blowing. Unbelievably brave. Beautiful , earth shattering and unforgettable. A truly rare talent

Brilliant. Devastating. Redemptive. I read it in one sitting

In Ootlin, Jenni Fagan brings to the memoir form those qualities for which her novels are so highly and justly praised: stylistic and structural innovation, an idiosyncratic lyricism, a fierce and untameable energy and an infectious, compelling narrative drive. Add to this a sorrow and pity for the vulnerable, a rage at those who would exploit that, and a despair at the failure of human empathy, and you have a vital document for these times. It is a beautiful, astonishing piece of work. I tore through it, and it through me. I will never, ever forget it

Fagan's Ootlin is a heartbreaking, magnificent, and incredibly important book. We are fortunate to have the light of this writer-witch shining amongst us; she is one of the best

Jenni has offered a difficult and vital gift to the world with Ootlin. It's the story of how a self is shattered, and what it takes to put a new self back together -- a story about the necessity of telling your own story. Through fragmented memories whose jagged edges cut deep, she shows us a system unable to do anything other than break those in its un-care -- but we also see the moments of kindness that mean survival, and a strength of spirit that shines through

Ootlin is a phenomenal work, it is powerful and beautiful, raw and real and such an important and evocative book, it clean broke my heart and the skilled deft pen of Fagan pieced it back together again. An empowering work but also shares an extraordinary vulnerability, this is a masterclass in the art of memoir writing

This is the most important book you'll read this year. It should be required reading for everyone who considers themselves part of a society. It will hold a mirror up to your privilege and comfort, it will emblazon its truths on your eyes, it will shock you into action and somehow, through it all, leave you rejoicing at the indomitability of one wee ootlin's hard-fought-for soul. Jenni Fagan is a warrior queen and this book is a tremendous, beautiful act of bravery, one which needs to be cherished

Ootlin is an astounding memoir. It brims with fire and alchemy, truth and spellbinding resilience. Jenni Fagan has conjured magic out of the story of her past, and particularly her childhood in care, and out of it made a work of art, and a life. Magnificent. It blew me away

Mesmerizing, heart-breaking and so, so beautiful. I'll never forget it

Novelist and poet Fagan writes powerfully about her childhood as a ward of the state, a rootless existence that fostered a fascination with storytelling

[An] extraordinary, harrowing, and uplifting memoir, Ootlin, about growing up in the Scottish care system ... begins before the beginning. Fagan imagines herself pre-birth: her mother was traumatised, suffering from psychosis. Fagan vividly describes the Victorian psychiatric hospital in which she was born, picturing it with a crescent moon above it - describing doctors, noise and her unborn self ... She doesn't shy away from the gothic in her tour de force of an opening. And she has a bravado that never fails her

Fagan writes at a rapid tempo and the propulsive rhythm of her prose carries the reader ... From the vantage point of today, Ootlin is a triumphant tale of survival by somebody who managed to preserve "the bit of me that shines"

Ootlin itself is a poetic work, impressionistically evoking harrowing and joyous experiences alike…But Ootlin is not just about the individual human spirit overcoming – it insists that it is structural failures within state care that allowed such appalling events to happen, shockingly recently. It is not easy to be reminded of the brutality humans are capable of, and how our systems enable and obfuscate it. But to read this book is also to be reminded of the importance of kindness, of beauty, and of storytelling – the act of sharing the light.

Ootlin is proof that there is part of [Fagan] that is always whole, tapped into the cosmos, looking towards the light

This is an extraordinary book, depressing and enraging by turns ... The result is a highly literary piece of work, the style of which does much to mitigate the distress caused by the content

WINNER OF THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2025 
 
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Non Fiction 2025 
 
'Extraordinary and uplifting' OBSERVER 
'A triumphant tale of survival' FINANCIAL TIMES 
'An extraordinary book' LITERARY REVIEW 
'To read this book is to be reminded of the importance of kindness, of beauty and of storytelling' iPAPER 
'A phenomenal memoir. I am in awe' AMY LIPTROT 
'Beautiful, deep, transfixing . . . it will burn a home in your heart' LEMN SISSAY 
'Essential reading, life-changing ... Beautiful, earth-shattering and unforgettable' SAMANTHA MORTON 
'Mesmerising, heart-breaking. I'll never forget it' ANNIE MAC 
'Should be required reading' CLAIRE FULLER 
 
The government told a story about me before I was born. 
 
Jenni Fagan was property of the state before birth. She drew her first breath in care and by the age of seven, she had lived in fourteen different homes and had her name changed multiple times. 
 
Twenty years after her first attempt to write this powerful memoir, Jenni is finally ready to share her account. 
Ootlin is a journey through the broken UK care system – it is one of displacement and exclusion, but also of the power of storytelling. It is about the very human act of making meaning from adversity.

Jenni Fagan

Praise for Ootlin

With punchy prose and a harrowing story of staggering resilience and fortitude, Fagan's memoir should be required reading

A phenomenal memoir. I am in awe. It takes exceptional strength to survive the events described in this book and courage, skill and magic to write a life story, especially when this type of story is often mar ...

A clear-eyed, unsentimental account of the author's childhood being shuffled between foster homes. Her resilience is remarkable. It's a book that really made me want to reach through the pages and help

With punchy prose and a harrowing story of staggering resilience and fortitude, Fagan's memoir should be required reading

A phenomenal memoir. I am in awe. It takes exceptional strength to survive the events described in this book and courage, skill and magic to write a life story, especially when this type of story is often mar ...

A clear-eyed, unsentimental account of the author's childhood being shuffled between foster homes. Her resilience is remarkable. It's a book that really made me want to reach through the pages and help

With punchy prose and a harrowing story of staggering resilience and fortitude, Fagan's memoir should be required reading

A phenomenal memoir. I am in awe. It takes exceptional strength to survive the events described in this book and courage, skill and magic to write a life story, especially when this type of story is often mar ...

A clear-eyed, unsentimental account of the author's childhood being shuffled between foster homes. Her resilience is remarkable. It's a book that really made me want to reach through the pages and help

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How I wrote it: Jenni Fagan on Luckenbooth

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