Ootlin began as a suicide note. Jenni Fagan was planning to kill herself – but summing up her life in one “small letter” seemed inadequate. So she borrowed a typewriter, and wrote out her life story.
The act of documenting her horrific childhood in care saved her, but she also vowed never to look at the manuscript again. Twenty years later, with several novels (including The Panopticon and Luckenbooth ) and poetry collections under her belt, Fagan returned to it. It was to be an act of reclamation: “The government told a story about me before I was born.
Strangers who took me in were given a story ...
Throughout a childhood in care , I was morphed into believing I was some kind of monster – just by those stories.” It’s easy to understand why Fagan might have reservations about publishing her memoir – indeed, due to come out last year, it was pushed back “due to personal circumstances” after some other early reviews had already run. And although a remarkable hope shines through Ootlin , it is also one of the most profoundly upsetting books I have ever encountered.
It can be almost physically difficult to read the unvarnished accounts of what happened to her as a child. Removed from her mentally ill mother as a baby, she is shuttled between scores of foster families, adoptive parents, and care homes in deprived areas around southern Scotland in the 80s and 90s. Ootlin (meaning “outsider”) often manages to make Trainspotting look like The Little House on .