MANY writers have a book-not-written, a literary pipe dream kept on the back burner till the time is right. But how many have a book they know they never want to write? This is how Jenni Fagan felt about her memoir Ootlin, the story of her life in the care system up to the age of 16. It’s a harrowing record of neglect and abuse and a fiercely powerful testament of survival.
It’s out this autumn after a year’s delay, and the story of its writing is almost as extraordinary as the story itself. When Fagan was 23, living alone in a tiny housing association flat suffering from what she now knows as complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), she sat down to write “an extended suicide note”. Borrowing a typewriter from a neighbour, she wrote for 14 hours a day.
Then she locked the manuscript in a suitcase and vowed never to look at it again. Somehow, the act of doing so enabled her to continue. It freed her to write other things: books of poetry, her extraordinary first novel The Panopticon, for which she was selected as one of the Granta Best of the Young British Novelists in 2013, further acclaimed novels The Sunlight Pilgrims, Luckenbooth and Hex, an adaptation of The Panopticon for the National Theatre of Scotland, scripts for film and television.
Then came 2020, and Fagan fell dangerously ill with covid-19. “I was very ill for about 18 days and delirious for a chunk of that. I felt like I was going to die, and I thought - as you do in such moments - if I die at.