Titre : Ootlin
Auteur.ice : Jenny Fagan
Edit: Metalwork
Publication date: January 17, 2025
Genre of the book: Roman
Sometimes there are stories behind the stories. Jenni Fagan looks back on her childhood as a ward of the state, the inability of adults to listen to her and the importance in her own construction of the stories recorded by social services concerning her.
Ootlin is, in Scottish, the name of a character who cannot find his place. Ootlin is a message of hope addressed to those who, when they were young, were dispossessed of their own history by institutions. At the age of 7, Jenni Fagan has already known 14 homes and as many names. Her identity is constructed from what the files say about her, since no parent witnesses her development. But strangely, the story we tell about her younger self always benefits, even protects, adults more than it protects her herself. Certain questions then arise. How is it possible to classify and label a life before it even exists or when it is still only at the dawn of its future? And how can we make information that we reconcile about a being of whom we ask no questions, the only valid narrative about him?
Sometimes farewell letters become Books. If Ootlin is autobiographical, and saving for its author, its sole function was not to help her overcome her traumas. Nor does it exist to confer upon him the status of victim – victim of psychological and physical abuse or even victim of neglect and silence. But it exists to denounce a system which guarantees impunity for adults. Children are too young to have a say, even when the book concerns them. They don't know what's good for them. But failing adults who have plenty of bad reasons for wanting to take care of a child who is not theirs are entirely entitled to speak on behalf of their victims. Jenni Fagan shows that “problem children” are the product of a failing system imagined by adults, for their benefit and that these same “problem children” placed by childhood often become so because of guardians who prefer their take responsibility for their own negligence.
-Jenni Fagan is ruthless and her courage is admirable. She offers a golden voice to those who have remained silent for too long, gracing them with an incisive and penetrating pen. There is neither too much nor too little in this story that captivates and questions. And above all Jenni Fagan calls us to order, we adults who, forgetting the children we were, do not give importance to the stories of those who are.
France
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