July 23, 2013 by Hograth Publishing
Hardcover, 336 Pages
Adult- Contemporary/Science Fiction
Review Copy/TLC Book Tours
Warnings: Rated R- graphic language, violence, sex and drug use
4/5 Stars- {For Readers 18&Up}

As THE PANOPTICON opens, we meet Anais Hendricks, a few months shy of her sixteenth birthday. Anais sits in the back of a police car in Midlothian, Scotland, headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders. She can’t remember the events that led her there, but across town a policewoman lies in a coma and there is blood on Anais’s school uniform.

Put in foster care at birth, Anais has moved through twenty-three placements before the age of seven. Along the way, she has endured unspeakable hardships and abuse, and has been let down, or worse, by almost every adult she encounters. And yet, despite the parade of horrors visited upon her early life, Anais greets the world with a witty, blunt, and endlessly entertaining voice. In the Panopticon, Anais fears that the system that has turned its back on her will beat her down and ultimately break her spirit. Yet, she also finds in the other residents an ad hoc family and begins to make her first halting steps toward friendships, taking charge of her own fate and discovering the depth of her own strength.

Thoughts

Its not everyday one stumbles upon a book like The Panopticon. A brutally graphic read about the foster care system in Sweden, revolving around young fifteen year old Anias, a troubled teen who lives in the world of drugs and prostitution. From the opening of the story we are sent into The Panopticon (the prison for foster care and young criminals) with Anias who for most of the book doesn't know if shes high, tripping or sober. She refers to most adults as wankers and pedos and mixes her bizarre hallucinations and thoughts into the story of her life. Along with the everyday scenarios at the prison readers also meet other kids who have been in the system and slowly begin reading about their story's of horror, heartbreak and for the most part a painfully devastating reality of what these abandoned, parentless children went through before arriving at the prison. The book growls and screams at you, it takes you into places you don't want to see but leaves you feeling like there was truth and a touch of the authors own experience with foster care.

The writing is fierce, brutally blunt and even at times overly harsh to read, but of course this is what makes the book so in your face, the authors voice which crosses into the obscene on many occasions gives the story its realness and toxicity. Not saying that I enjoyed the language, which was crass, disturbing and foul, but I do understand along with the Swedish slang the impact it had creating the environment in which Anias lived. In order to appreciate what this characters life was, Fagan had to take readers right into the stinky bowels of Panopticon. Normally a book like this, one that is so graphic with its language, drug use and sex scenes would offend me, but considering who the character was, where she was and how she grew up I was able to look past what would offend me and see the authentic reality the author created. F words, drug use and sex are daily occurrences in real life, even more so for troubled teens. Can you imagine what a day in the life of a troubled teen with no parents living from foster care, to foster, to foster care prison addicted to tripping could look like? The Panopiction can give you taste of that question.


Recommended to readers who enjoy bold reads and science fiction. Please note: This book while interesting contains very graphic content, readers who are offended by language and drug/sex scenes may want to pass.

JENNI FAGAN was born in Livingston, Scotland. She graduated from Greenwich University and won a scholarship to the Royal Holloway MFA. A published poet, she has won awards from Arts Council England, Dewar Arts and Scottish Screen among others. She has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize. She is currently the new Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University. The Panopticon is her first novel.