New Book Recommendations with Brian Toal
Ootlin by Jennin Fagan
You may know Jenni Fagan through Luckenbooth or The Panopticon, both reviewed here. That’s certainly all I knew of her. However, she was the property of the state for the first sixteen years of her life, moving from foster home to care and finally set up in a flat by herself at 16. By the time she was seven, she had lived in fourteen different homes and had her name changed multiple times. Twenty years after her first attempt at writing this harrowing but ultimately life-affirming memoir, Dr Jenni Fagan is finally ready to share her experiences of the care system.
At times the experiences recounted seem too shocking to be true. How could any adult treat a young, vulnerable child so poorly? And get paid by the state? Some of these foster ‘mothers’ made her eat dog food, some abused her physically and emotionally, some gave her the most horrible clothes and haircuts as if to revel in her discomfort. The abuse she received at the hands of these state-sanctioned abusers forced her to turn to drugs to escape the misery of her life.
It was easy …
…for her to get drugs in care homes as you just had to hang out with the ‘right’ people. Coming back late three sheets to the wind, blacking out and not remembering much of the night before were par for the course for Jenni. She gradually found her way to the dodgier parts of Edinburgh, was given enough drugs to floor an elephant, and then was vaguely aware of lots of guys suddenly appearing in the flat. Since this incident, she has been traumatised.
She was able to finally retrieve a lot of court transcripts and documentation from her time in care, although much of it was lost forever. She has pieced together what she could by interviewing those who were there, those involved in her upbringing, those who were responsible for her welfare. The reflections towards the end of the book are humbling and life-affirming. Interestingly, it was the attitudes of the people in her life which affected her just as much as what they did to her: “Those negative projections towards me as a child in care caused as much damage as every other thing I had been through.”
When she was grounded, she read, and all that reading has turned her into a fantastic writer herself. Now she is writing her own story: “This world we are living in is our story right now. It is up to all of us what we want to do with that, and we will pass down our actions, or inactions, to the generations coming after us.” Indeed.
The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole
“The UK government has pledged to protect 30 per cent of England for nature by 2030 – the ‘30×30’ goal – yet currently only around 3 per cent of England makes the cut. There is, in other words, a mountain to climb, and very little time left to do it.” In Shrubsole’s new book, he examines the legal and political framework which has led to this sorry state of affairs. Landowners have more rights in Britain than elsewhere, the state owns far less land and controls far less land than in other countries, and we are one of the most nature deprived countries in Europe. Why is this?
Successive governments have seemed reluctant to tell farmers what to do with their land, and as a result, ‘…there is no corresponding legal duty on landowners to be the good stewards they often claim to be.’ Much is made of the term ‘stewardship’, a term which farmers and landowners like to use as a way of telling the public not to worry and not to interfere, as the stewards of the land are looking after things for us. If only that were true. ‘We remain in thrall to the Victorian idea that our supposedly ‘green and pleasant land’ is threatened only by the ‘dark satanic mills’ of urban industry. In fact, the greatest threat to the countryside comes from within it.’ This is a sobering book full of practical advice about how to save our countryside.
‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey
‘Life on our planet as you’ve never seen it before.’ This beautiful, short novel won The Booker Prize 2024, and with good reason. It’s a thought-provoking commentary on life on Earth from the unique perspective of the International Space Station. Harvey’s conceit is to use the observations of the crew – what they literally see out the windows – to hang her own observations of life, humanity and what it is to be alive. At times the Earth seems to hang there, fragile and exposed in a sea of black, even the stars obscured at times. At other times it seems vibrant, roiling, solid and ineffable, rolling just below their craft and hurtling from day to night several times in 24 hours.
One of the most beautiful descriptions in the book is of the aurora over the South Pole. “It ripples, spills, it’s smoke that pours across the face of the planet; the ice is green, the underside of the spacecraft an alien pall. The light gains edges and limbs; folds and opens.” To be able to see the aurora from space, glancing over the ice. Can you imagine? Another vivid description is of a typhoon developing, growing and swirling every larger with each passing orbit. The Indonesian islands seemed smaller once the typhoon had passed because from space the flooding was apparent to the naked eye. Wow. This book doesn’t really go anywhere. The Space Station loops around and around. Very clever. But what a ride, nevertheless.
Books available from Waterstones, Byres Road and from all good book shops.
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