Ootlin cover art

Ootlin

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Ootlin

By: Dr Jenni Fagan
Narrated by: Isis Hainsworth
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The government told a story about me before I was born.

Jenni Fagan was property of the state before birth. She drew her first breath in care and by the age of seven, she had lived in fourteen different homes and had her name changed multiple times.

Twenty years after her first attempt to write this powerful memoir, Jenni is finally ready to share her account. Ootlin is a journey through the broken UK care system – it is one of displacement and exclusion, but also of the power of storytelling. It is about the very human act of making meaning from adversity.

'Beautiful, deep, transfixing . . . it will burn a home in your heart' LEMN SISSAY

'Essential reading, life-changing' SAMANTHA MORTON

'An astonishing piece of work' NIALL GRIFFITHS

©2023 Jenni Fagan (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Art & Literature Authors Women Inspiring Heartfelt Thought-Provoking Memoir

Listeners also enjoyed...

Hex cover art
The Sunlight Pilgrims cover art
Poor cover art
Slum Boy cover art
Don’t Ask Me About My Dad cover art
Stella's Story cover art
BARE cover art
The Cutting Girl: Charlotte cover art
Trauma Industrial Complex cover art
My Girl cover art
What the Wild Sea Can Be cover art
The Outrun cover art
A Well-Trained Wife cover art
Before I Was Born, She Did This cover art
Heirs and Graces cover art
The True Story of Fireman Scam cover art

Critic reviews

"Beautiful, deep, dangerous, transfixing...it will burn a home in your heart, it has in mine... From start to finish I could not put it down." (Lemn Sissay)

"A phenomenal memoir. I am in awe. It takes exceptional strength to survive the events described in this book and courage, skill and magic to write a life story, especially when this type of story is often marginalised." (Amy Liptrot)

"Unbelievably brave. Beautiful, earth-shattering and unforgettable. A truly rare talent." (Samantha Morton)

All stars
Most relevant
Wow what a book. A harrowing story, beautifully written. This is a story that needs to be told and will stay in my mind forever. So sad, such strength, truly heartbreaking.
The narrator reads this perfectly and gives the story the feeling and respect it deserves.

A remarkable memoir

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Beautiful memoir, very well narrated, the writing is poetic despite it being a hard story. I cried and wanted to scream when listening to this book. I don’t think I will ever forget this book.

Hard but powerful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I am so overwhelmed in a good way by how brilliant this book is. A lesson for all of us to never judge or turn a blind eye to the issues in society that are wrong. Thank you for being brave enough to put your story down on paper.

Such an incredible book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

It's hard to conceive of how much courage, strength, determination and artistic and intellectual brilliance it must have taken to create such beauty by revisiting and exposing the grievous failures of a system and human beings. Dr Fagan's experiences in the care system and situations/relationships arising from these are vividly, powerfully rendered in prose, and Isis Hainsworth's narration is compelling.

Soaring, Shining Indictment

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

There aren’t really words to describe this book that aren’t reductive in the face of all the author endured. One can only bear witness to the story of Fagan, who experienced a thousand lifetimes just in her childhood, and more negative experiences (spanning from the unkind to the evil) than any human should have to bear once.
The book is beautifully written, and expertly narrated, an absolute must-listen.

Powerful and Moving

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews