Member Reviews

A great story that looks at the Scottish child care system. Beautifully written and gives you a great insight that creates emotions as it looks at abuse and drug use. So much cruelty and gives an insight to the feelings of never feeling loved and being lost and let down by a system that suppose ti protect you

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As stated in the blurb, this really is a powerful memoir. Jenni Fagan, her chosen name, writes in such a skillful way about the heartbreaking way she was treated all throughout her childhood in the 'care' system. An honest memoir which exposes the failings of a system which is supposed to care for those in need. Jenni Fagan writes with courage and great feeling about those times, a story which needed to be told.

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This is a memoir of a childhood filled with abandonment, abuse and a failing care system.

I don’t usually seek out such books, so I’m not quite sure why I requested this -. I like to disappear from the real world and the life story of someone who spent her entire life in and out of foster placements and care homes, with very little love or care, is depressing. It shouldn’t be like this.

However, it is also a story of how, despite all of the odds against her, Jenni succeeded. The small glimpses of affection and care allowed her the resilience to start her own life.

The story is brutal, it is upsetting. It is not an easy read, nor an enjoyable read. It will, however, give so many people an understanding of why so many raised through the care system have adverse childhood experiences that can lead them to mental health problems, substance misuse, or a life of continued abuse.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, for the opportunity to read this book

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Possibly one of the most courageous voices I've read for a long, long time. Being someone who always escaped into stories myself, I connected with this writer strongly. And whilst I have experienced a degree of trauma myself, I was horrified and deeply saddened to read this woman's life experiences. The level of ignorance, cruelty and abuse she suffered were almost incomprehensible to me. How a system meant to protect defenceless children, itself became part of the cycle of abuse.

Jenni was born into a system that cared little for the vulnerable. That saw children as a commodity, a thing - an inconvenience.

Abused and rejected time and time again, drugs became an escape from the reality of hell. But even at the lowest of lows, Jenni had a seam of determination and courage running through her, and an empathy that blew me away. The world had rarely been kind, yet she was.

We all have our stories but to tell one that is so embedded with trauma was never going to be an easy one to tell. We can and must share our stories, we must be kinder and we must show up for ourselves and others.

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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 the book. 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.”

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A brief look into the care system and how it failed one girl from the first day of her life for sixteen years.
At times, it was heartbreaking to read but through out Jenni Fagan weaves a thread of hope that we, the reader tag along with.
Brimming with beautifully poetic prose, this book is a must-read for all who wish to understand a system that is so very tragically broken.

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To say I got a book hangover from reading this is an understatement. This book will stay with you for a long while after you finish reading it, I cried after reading it and it made me think alot about life and people. It is beautifully written, full of character and heart. No one should have to go through half of the stuff that poor Jenni did but miraculously she come out the other side of it still with some positivity and the good morals. I would love to know more about her now and her adult life as she seems to have turned herself around really well.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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Oh what a harrowing, heartbreaking read! You’ll need to keep the tissues handy for this incredibly moving memoir. Jenni Fagan takes us on a rough rollercoaster ride of her extremely challenging life. It’s one that’s been largely lived in the Scottish care system since she was born.

Although the notion of truly caring for her is mostly absent from her birth mother and the foster and adoptive parents she encounters. Passed from pillar to post, with very little notice at times, Jenni bravely learns how to survive, if not thrive.

She has to continually adjust and adapt to new people, families, homes and environments, and a distinct lack of consistent, appropriate care or love. With the turmoil of frequent moves, there is a scant sense of being at home anywhere at all.

Her life is riddled with cruelty and abuse at every turn. She succeeds in temporarily minimising the dark shadows by an addiction to mind-altering substances. It’s a life few of us could comprehend, one full of fear and shame and a raging anger against the system. It’s an anger we can empathise with as we read her pull-no-punches words.

Jenni’s marvellous saving grace is her ability to vividly write out her experiences. She expresses her feelings through the medium of poetry and prose. In sharing her story so lyrically and courageously here, she reveals her talent and raw courage. Grateful thanks to Random House, UK, Cornerstone and NetGalley for the ARC.

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A bleak memoir of a really tough life, Ootlin takes you from Fagan’s birth in a mental health facility to leaving the care system as a young adult. It’s lyrical and beautiful, very precisely capturing the voice of a child at times, but I would never be able to say that I enjoyed the harrowing experience of reading it.

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Ootlin is an unforgettable and harrowing read. It is a memoir by Jenni Fagan that leaves you in absolute awe that she is still standing and able to share this because of the cruelty she suffered. It is so incredibly important that not only we learn about the atrocities children suffer at the hands of adults supposed to protect them and the failures of the social care system through people like Jenni. But then we have a responsibility as a person/reader/society to challenge these atrocities and failures and do something about them.

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I've just spent about thirty six hours with Jenni. Jenni was born on a psychiatric ward, and taken from her Mum immediately. Her life after that was a myriad of living with foster carers, her biological mum, adoptive parents, and care homes. Jenni never felt love, and faced unimaginable abuse, and trauma. No-one cared, no-one loved her...a sad true story...
An honest, and raw story that will stay with you for a while

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This memoir by Jenni Fagan is a devastating look at the realities of a life in care, specifically a life in the Scottish care system. To call her a looked after child seems a step too far, no one seemed to look after this child, and the conjecture is that no child that enters the system at a few days old is ever either cared for, or looked after, even in the most basic way.

The USP of this memoir is how Jenni's resilience amongst other characteristics, has led to her being an author and a poet. How she got there is a miracle and her book gives us some insight but that doesn't make it any less amazing!

A difficult but informative read.

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Ootlin by Jenni Fagan is a memoir about being born into the care system in Scotland, with 29 different placements under four different names in just 16 years. Displaced and failed throughout her young life, this book is Jenni taking back her story.

Early on, Jenni tells us that she began writing this memoir as a suicide note. But she realised in the writing of it that she hadn't done enough living ( 'shining' as she describes it). And the one thing that you so desperately wanted for her, after reading this book, was for her to thrive.

The 'Ootlin' of the title is a Scottish word for an outsider, someone who doesn't belong. And that's a sense you get from the startling opening section, where her mother delivers her in a psychiatric hospital, so she is the property of the state even before she leaves the womb.

You don’t enjoy books like this, as it’s not entertainment - when the subject matter encompasses abuse, neglect, and a suicide attempt, that would be the wrong word. But after struggling a little with the opening section, I quickly found myself just being totally swept away by the telling of the story. It's sad and heartbreaking, but also incredibly powerful and I couldn't put it down. I read this in three quick gulps.

It's a book that will put you through the wringer, and anger was a predominant emotion for me throughout, and disgust at how a child could be treated. But there's admiration there too, at the resilience and fortitude that she displays - Jenni has a spark that makes you root for her, wanting desperately for her to find support.

It's astounding that Jenni is not broken by what happens to her, that she manages to keep going 'in spite' of the system. There are some truly evil people in this book, especially one foster mother in particular who subjects a child to the most depraved cruelty. Some of these people shouldn't be put in charge of a goldfish.

Because nobody asks - 'neither social worker, teacher, foster parent, police, doctor....nobody has ever asked 'what happened to you...who hurt you...what can we do for you?' But as she says herself, they might be afraid of what her answer may be, that they might have to do something about it.

There's such lyricism to her descriptions. There are some beautiful, breathless passages - a night before a court appearance is memorably frantic. The difficult passages, of which there are a few, are so powerfully described. The descriptions of the places she finds herself, including various homes, tower blocks, caravans and mobile homes, are extremely vivid and authentic. Her writing is so punchy, dynamic, and able to pull you straight into her world. Her love of words is referred to a few times in the book, at times providing her only escape.

'words are the only thing that has always traveled with me, that I can turn to no matter what and be just who I am, and when I feel like I am fragmenting and have no clue who I am - I look at my words to find a part of me, and somehow it helps me come back to myself.'

and later

'words are a lighthouse. No good story turns a child away, ever.'

There's a realness to this book that I haven't encountered in a while, and I found it hard to just pick up a fictional book straight after this; it just felt pale and anemic in comparison. There are parts that are painful and incredibly hard to read, and they jolted me, but you have to - you can’t look away. This is her story, not the one told by the authorities before she was moved yet again.

There are good people along the way, friends and occasionally foster parents, well-meaning people. 'Being humane is the highest form of intelligence. It is the surest proof of a soul.’

It may have started as a suicide note, but for Jenni, the writing of the book becomes a way for her to reclaim herself from 'the stories put upon me, that were often very little to do with me.' She has certainly done that, with this visceral and essential book, one of the most powerful I’ve read in some time.

'I am still here and I care more than ever...I am angrier than I have ever been, and I admire every person who takes a stand in small ways, in huge ways, without applause. It is not meaningless; we are the story – all of us – for as long as we are still here.'

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This is an aching read, especially since it comes without the buffer of fiction (the included photographs of Fagan's childhood are a frequent stab to the chest.) The prose is wonderfully written, and you can feel the way Fagan's narrative voice ages and grows with each chapter that documents her life, flowing between bitterness and optimism. Ootlin isn't for the faint hearted, but exposes you to a plethora of emotions that keep the pages turning.

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Stream of conciousness. Short sentences. Scenes of desperation.
Arduous to read. Haranguing to understand a life so damaged. After “Luckenbooth” this is my second attempt at Jenni Fagan.
Jenni Fagan’s autobiography is difficult to swallow: to understand the disinterest of her natural parents, the institutional carelessness, the cruelty of foster parents, shoving a small child from pillar to post and exposing her to all that cruelty and devastation
The strangest thing was, although I should have been outraged or utterly heart-broken by this story, I wasn’t and I strangely did not warm to Jenni’s persona. I guess that was either to protect myself whilst reading or due to the detached tone of Jenni’s narration, but it puzzled me.
But all the best wishes to Fagan for conquering her demons!

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Heartbreaking and infuriating memoir. Fagan draws you into her world. The fact that she still has compassion after what she lived through, and can write about it with unflinching honesty and hope, makes this biography a masterpiece.

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Gosh, this is a difficult read. How could a little girl be treated with such casual cruelty, passed around the care system and blamed for just trying to exist. Heart breaking but Jenni survives somehow, a testament to her strength of character.

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First of all, I want to say that I was drawn to this as a am a big fan of Jenni Fagan’s novels. She is an amazing writer.
An Ootlin is an outsider and she writes a memoir of her entire childhood growing up in the Scottish care system.
It is a hard read. Utterly devastating. Jenni is abused and demeaned in so many ways. It is an awful awful indictment of the state as a parent of vulnerable children.
But it is - as expected - beautifully written, visceral and raw.
It is a testament to Jenni’s spirit that she has survived.
So highly recommended: a story that needed to be told.

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This book is not an easy read. It's Jenni's life and it's very hard to comprehend and understand how adults could treat a child this way. I know it's true and it should never happen again but variations sadly will.
Jenni you are an inspiration to still be here and a functional person after what you have lived through.

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Phenomenal, couldn't put it down, I thought I knew Jenni's story but this is brutal, constant, it doesn't let up. she is a beautiful writer of poetry and fiction and she brings that to bear on this heartbreaking story, if you think you know anything about the care system in Scotland you should definitely read it.

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