Welcome to the Panopticon

In a style reminiscent of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, The Panopticon is the story of fifteen-year-old Anais. Told through her eyes and in her voice, it takes some getting used to - throughout the book, I found the Scottish dialect ("I dinnae ken") slightly distracting.

Which was a shame, because Anais' story is a compelling and disturbing one. Having spent her life moving between care homes and foster parents, it is indicative of the unconventional nature of her upbringing that her favourite foster parent to date was Teresa, a prostitute.

When Teresa dies, and Anais is accused of putting a policewoman in a coma, she finds herself in the last chance saloon where troubled young people are sent: the panopticon. Conceived by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century, a panopticon is described as "a circular prison with cells so constructed that the prisoners can be observed at all times" (see image below).

Jenni Fagan

The place itself, though, didn't seem to live up to its name. The teenage inmates - including a bestialist, a self-harmer and a drug addict - are free to come and go as they please - regularly hitting the town in the evenings -  and there are hidden areas, like the roof, where they go when they want to be sure they aren't being watched. Drugs are rife - the night nurse often comments that Anais' pupils look dilated - but no one in authority seems to do anything about it, and prostitution is seen simply as an easy means of supplementing pocket money - for the male residents as well as the female ones. In a true panopticon, this would surely be impossible. Or is the book a social commentary on the inadequacy and/or impotence of the care system in the UK? I can't tell.

Our "heroine" (double-entendre intended) seems permanently high or low on something, which increases her paranoia and she becomes increasingly convinced that she's being watched all the time, even when she's not within the care home. Perhaps the title refers to a mental panopticon as opposed to the physical one? Clearly, the reference was a little too oblique for me.

Panopticon design

After one of her friends is abducted by a stranger after getting into his car to earn money and another kill herself out of guilt, Anais really begins to unravel and it is this mental anguish rather than the gang rape she experiences that is her undoing. When she attacks a stranger, she gives the police exactly what they need to put her away for good.

By turns brutally graphic, at other times poetically insightful, Anais' story always feels tragic. She comes across as a good person let down by the system and one can't help but wonder how many children are out there in the same situation. I can't describe the novel as anything other than depressing and it was hard going plus I still don't really know what was meant by the panopticon. Nonetheless, it feels like an important book to read for anyone who wants to understand despair and it left me grateful that, like Bob Geldof said "Tonight, thank god, it's them instead of you".