The Panopticon

Intense, emotional and impressive are the words that spring to mind to describe Jenni Fagan's debut novel The Panopticon, and yet it was not at all what I had anticipated. The front cover, blurb and page one led me to expect dystopian, futuristic and YA; what I got was a disturbing-and  definitely adult-slice of reality for a teenager who has slipped through the social cracks.

The individual and strongly-realised Scottish voice of fifteen-year-old Anais Hendricks guides the reader through the shortfalls of the care system. Shifted from one 'carer' to another, Anais careers from one criminal offence to the next, until she finds herself in a police car on the way to the Panoptican, a home for chronic young offenders. This is where Fagan picks up her drug-addled story, which features no end of sad and shocking incidents. This book has much more to offer than your typical misery memoir, however. There are moments of real tenderness between Anais and her fellow 'cared-for young people', which help to provide a sense of hope in an environment where there could easily be none.

If colourful language is not your your thing, this might not be the book for you, but everyone else should give it a go. From 30 pages in, it is a real miss-your-bus-stop book, and Fagan has an energetic and imaginative voice you want to hear more of.