I know that Anais Hendricks, the fierce heroine of Jenni Fagan’s fierce first novel, The Pantopticon (Crown, digital galley) is Scottish, but I keep picturing the 15-year-old chronic offender as Bullet, the throwaway Seattle street kid on this season of AMC’s The Killing. The spiky hair, the multiple piercings, the fake tattoo, the boyish swagger and constant profanity. It’s all protection for a vulnerable heart.
Anais has blood on her school uniform when she arrives at the Pantopticon, a residence for foster-care outcasts and deliquents housed in a former prison whose central watchtower allows for constant surveillance. The blood may or may not belong to a police officer lying in a coma. Anais, coming off a ketamine-induced high, doesn’t remember the altercation, but she realizes that “if the pig dies” she’ll be locked up in a secure unit until she’s 18. She’d rather be dead.
Meanwhile, she knows she’s some eager social worker’s project. “As specimans go, they always get excited about me. I’m a good one. A show-stopper. I’m the kind of kid they’ll still enquire about 10 years later. Fifty-one placements, drug problems, violence, dead adopted mum, no biological links, constant offending.”
Anais shifts her narration between incidents from her checkered past to her interactions with the Pantopticon’s other residents: Isla, a self-harmer with toddler twins and AIDs; Tash, who’s on the game to earn money for her future with Isla; Doug, who jumps off a roof in a bid for freedom; Shortie, who’s good with her fists.
A past boyfriend texts her from jail.The police continue to interrogate her. An old monk in another lock-up supposedly remembers her birth in an asylum. “He said I was the daughter of a cigarillo-smoking Outcast Queen. . .He said she flew intae the nuthouse on a flying cat.” Anais, paranoid from the drugs, wonders if she’s schizophrenic, knows she’s damaged goods. But dreadlocked social worker Angus encourages her to believe in herself, to do something with her life.
“I dinnae say I might paint when I grow up. I dinnae say I’ll learn French. . .I dinnae say I’ll volunteer to help some old lady with her shopping…she’ll take me under her wing and get tae like me and feed me apple pie and gin — and tell me all her stories about the good old days.”
What will happen to Anais, let down by everyone she ever trusts? Will she ever have good new days? Please don’t let her end up like Bullet. Don’t go breaking my heart.
Girl, descending
July 24, 2013 by patebooks
I love characters like this…tough on the outside, vulnerable underbelly, and smart. Lisbeth kind of girls. On the list it goes.
Are you, or did you find that the dialect affected your enjoyment of the book? I declined to be on the tour for this one because of it, but then the publisher offered me a copy anyway and so it’s on its way to me. Everyone is calling it the book of the year so I had to be a part of that. Right?
The dialect dinnae bother me; not that strong. But the profanity sure is, tho. Book of the year? I heard it was going to be Night Film!
Haven’t read the book so shouldn’t comment. But I loved that character, Bullet. A lot of Killing fans loved Bullet. Too bad this season, despite all kindsa promise and that gorgeous intense Sarsgaard fella, sucked. That ending, where Supernatural Eliot Stabler turns out to be the killer? Bogus! All the fans had pegged him by episode 2 and then decided, nah, too easy and stupid. We came up with much better plots on our own! Maybe they should crowd-write television.
Anyhow, keep reading. Not that anybody has to tell you that.
We were talking The Killing ending at lunch and agreed it was too easy and pat. Kept expecting some sort of twist. RIP Bullet.