The Sunlight Pilgrims: A Novel

"Fierce and cleareyed...Fagan’s novel balances the oncoming climate disaster with the human-scales stories of these characters, focusing especially on Stella, whose feelings about her sexual identity are refreshingly resolute...Fagan is a poet as well as a novelist, and many of her images of this unbidden winter are shot through with lyric beauty…Strange beauty can be found in destruction, and Fagan is fearless and wise to allow her characters to be as entranced by nature’s awesome power as they are terrified of it.”xa0— New York Times Book Review “Fagan's keen ear for crackling dialogue… betrays a bittersweet depth. And her imagery is sumptuous. As the cold, slow reality of climate change creeps across the countryside, she delivers page after crystalline page of haunting, heart-stopping lyricism… [Fagan] captures what so much apocalyptic literature loses: the way humans can become mute, withdrawn, and even darkly humorous in the face of doom, rather than running around in panic.”xa0— NPR.org “Chilling and thrilling.”xa0— Dallas Morning News “Fagan depicts the band of misfits assembled in the harbor town of Clachan Fells with the same warmth she invested in the teenage outcasts of her ambitious, exciting debut, The Panopticon (2013) … The frozen landscape is as beautiful as it is menacing in Fagan's evocative descriptions, and the vast snowstorm that closes the novel finds Dylan, Stella, and Constance safe and warm inside…for now. Tales of "sunlight pilgrims" from the north lyrically reinforce the author's theme that the struggle for survival can be joyful. More fine work from this gifted Scottish writer.”— Kirkus (starred review) “Gorgeous and vividly rendered, Fagan’s second novel is a beguiling, beautiful testament to the tenacity of the human spirit.”— Booklist "A vivid story."— Publishers Weekly “ The Sunlight Pilgrims is a story about light and darkness, the essential co-existence of the two, the life-force which drives us on into the light and its transforming power even when everything appears to be stacked against us. It is also about the spectrum of light, the different colors which it produces and the wide range of ways in which we can live. It is a beautiful story which itself illuminates, and perhaps above all it illuminates the importance of respecting difference.”xa0— Electric Literature “It is about what happens in between and around and in spite of those big things: the everyday moments of life and its machinations, the work we do to find our place in a chaotic world, and what it means to love and be loved.” — Shelf Awareness "[A] vivid and tender coming-of-age story set at the end of the world."— Kirsty Logan, Thexa0Guardian "Fagan’s vivid, poetic-prose style injects the book with energy. She writes at the pace of thought, sentences like gunfire … She has a poet's affection for precision and image."— Financial Times "Fagan …explores some big ideas; namely the environment, gender and familial structure. She addresses these themes with an infectious, otherworldly hilarity, assembling an eccentric cast of characters who triumphantly flout convention."— Times Literary Supplement "Fagan received widespread acclaim for her 2012 debut The Panopticon , and was named as one of the prestigious Granta Best of Young British Novelists a year later. The Sunlight Pilgrims further cements Fagan’s reputation as a writer of skill and depth...[She]xa0writes like the poet that she is, with an original eye for description, a wonderful rhythm to her prose, and some genuinely inspiring and unusual characters. An impressive read."— Big Issue " The Sunlight Pilgrims evokes a chillingly plausible near-future . . . intimately imagined."— The Spectator Praise for Jenni Fagan's The Panopticon Named one of Granta 's Best of Young British NovelistsShortlisted for The Desmond Elliott AwardShortlisted for The James Tait Black PrizeShortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize Nominated forxa0The Pushcart Prize “Fagan has created a feisty, brass-knuckled yet deeply vulnerable heroine, who feels like sort of a cross between Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson’s 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,' and one of Irvine Welsh’s drug-taking Scottish miscreants from 'Trainspotting' or 'Skagboys.' Her novel is by turns gritty, unnerving, exhausting, [and] ferocious...A deeply felt and genuinely affecting novel.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times “Fagan has given us one of the most spirited heroines to cuss, kiss, bite and generally break the nose of the English novel in many a moon…there is no resisting the tidal rollout of Fagan’s imagery. Her prose beats behind your eyelids, the flow of images widening to a glittering delta whenever Anais approaches the vexed issue of her origins… vive Jenni Fagan...whose next book just moved into my ‘eagerly anticipated’ pile.”— Tom Shone, New York Times Book Review “[Fagan] grew up in what’s euphemistically called ‘the care system,’ and she writes about these young people with a deep sympathy for their violently disordered lives and an equally deep appreciation of their humor and resiliency…[Fagan has a] rousing voice, with its roundly rendered Scottish accent.”— Ron Charles, Washington Post "A classic coming-of-age tale."— Boston Globe “Fagan’s style calls to mind fellow Scottish writer Anthony Burgess, whose novel A Clockwork Orange used similar lexicographic liberties to reinforce a theme of teenage dystopia” — The Daily Beast “[A] terrific portrait of a young criminal…Fagan makes this ugly life somehow beautiful.”— Alan Cheuse, NPR " The Panopticon [is] a terrifically gritty and vivid debut.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer “She’s Oliver, with a twist. Anais Hendricks, 15, and the female protagonist of poetess Fagan’s first novel, cuts right to the chase as she chronicles the modern British foster care system.” — New York Post “The Panopticon is like its protagonist: tough as old boots and always ready with the fists, but likely to steal your heart if you’ll just slow down and listen.”— National Post “Fagan creates a complex and vulnerable character…[and] even though Anais makes it hard for you to love her, you can’t help wishing her out of her plight and cheering her upward.” — Bust (four stars) "The Panopticon is an exquisite first novel--Jenni Fagan has created a dark, disturbing, yet ultimately hopeful portrait of a young woman growing up alone in the Scottish foster care system. xa0To say it is haunting is an understatement--I kept wanting to set a place for Anais at the table with the rest of my children."— Vanessa Diffenbaugh, New York Times bestselling author of The Language of Flowers "Jenni Fagan has created a high-resolution portrait of a throwaway kid. Fifteen-year-old Anais, born in a mental ward, tumbled through the social work system, violated and violent, high on whatever, each decision she makes is a jaunty wave as she sails past the next point of no return. This is a contemporary tragedy of the highest order." — Carol Anshaw, New York Times bestselling author of Carry the One “In the Margaret Atwood/ The Handmaid’s Tale vein—very literary and suspenseful. I like books set in an altered reality—one that feels familiar and yet also deeply unfamiliar, that embodies some of the dailiness of life, and yet slowly reveals itself to be a very different, much more sinister place.”— Gillian Flynn, Oprah.com "With The Panopticon , Fagan makes Foucault proud and readers ecstastic. This is why we read.xa0You'll begin wanting to save Anais Hendricks but finish wondering if, and how, she's managed to save you."— Tupelo Hassman, author of Girlchild "Jenni Fagan is the real thing, and The Panopticon is a real treat: maturely alive to the pains of maturing, and cleverly amused as well as appalled by what it finds in the world." -Andrew Motion "Ferocious and devastating, The Panopticon sounds a battle-cry on behalf of the abandoned, the battered, and the betrayed. To call it a good novel is not good enough: this is an important novel, a book with a conscience, a passionate challenge to the powers-that-be. Jenni Fagan smashes every possible euphemism for adolescent intimacy and adolescent violence, and she does it with tenderness and even humour. Hats off to Jenni Fagan! I will be recommending this book to everyone I know." -Eleanor Catton, author of The Rehearsal "This is a wonderful book – gripping and brilliant. Anais’s journey will break your heart and her voice is unforgettable. Bursting with wit, humanity and beauty as well as an unflinching portrayal of life as a ‘cared for’ young adult, this book will not let you go." -Kate Williams "Best debut novel I've read this year." -Irvine Welsh "Uncompromising and courageous...one of the most cunning and spirited novels I’ve read for years. The story of Anais, a fifteen-year-old girl blasting her way through the care-home system while the system in turn blasts her away to nothing, looks on the surface to be work of a recognizable sort, the post-Dickensian moral realism/fabulism associated with writers like Irvine Welsh. But Fagan’s narrative talent is really more reminiscent of early Camus and that this novel is a debut is near unbelievable. Tough and calm, electrifying and intent, it is an intelligent and deeply literary novel which deals its hope and hopelessness simultaneously with a humaneness, both urgent and timeless, rooted in real narrative subtlety."– Ali Smith, TLS – books of the year "If you’re trying to find a novel to engage a determinedly illiterate teenager, give them this one. Anais, the 15-year-old heroine and narrator, has a rough, raw, joyous voice that leaps right off the page and grabs you by the throat…This punkish young philosopher is struggling with a terrible past, while battling sinister social workers. Though this will appeal to teenagers, the language and ideas are wholly adult, and the glorious Anais is unforgettable." – The Times "[A] confident and deftly wrought debut… The Panopticon is an example of what Martin Amis has called the “voice novel”, the success of which depends on the convincing portrayal of an idiosyncratic narrator. In this Fagan excels…Her voice is compellingly realised. We cheer her on as she rails against abusive boyfriends and apathetic social workers, her defiance rendered in a rich Midlothian brogue." – Financial Times "The most assured and intriguing first novel by a Scottish writer that I have read in a decade, a book which is lithely and poetically written, politically and morally brave and simply unforgettable…Anais’s voice is an intricate blend of the demotic and the hauntingly lyrical…There are moments which are genuinely distressing to read, which return the reader to a painful sense of how mindlessly and unspeakable cruel people can be. But it is marbled with cynical, smart comedy…Fagan is exceptionally skilful with bathos, a notoriously difficult literary register; here, however, it manages to be funny and heart-breakingly tender at the same time…Naturalistic and pleasingly oblique. Life, as Stevenson said, is “infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant”. To render this novelistically is a rare achievement…The Panopticon appeals to writers since in some ways the novelist is the prison’s arch-overseer, able to look into the minds of the characters. But that comes with a duty: to keep your eyes open even when you’d rather shut them. Fagan is gloriously open-eyed about immaturity, maturity, sexuality, crime, dispossession and more. Her ability to capture the cross-currents of language, the impersonations of consciousness, is admirable…As a debut, The Panopticon does everything it should. It announces a major new star in the firmament." – Stuart Kelly, Scotsman "[The narrator] is engagingly drawn by Fagan, who has created a character possessed of intellectual curiosity and individual quirks…Written with great verve…Fagan has a clear voice, an unflinching feel for the complexity of the teenage mindset, and an awareness of the burden we impose on children…What’s intriguing here – particularly in a Scottish fiction landscape that can display too much of the plodding everyday – is her effort to lift the story of teen misadventure into a heightened realm of intellectual aspiration and quasi-sci-fi notions of sinister social change." – Scotland on Sunday "What Fagan depicts in her debut novel, The Panopticon , is a society in which people don't just fall through the net – there is no net…Fagan is writing about important stuff: the losers, the lonely, most of them women. [Anais] maintains a cool, smart, pretty, witty and wise persona." – Guardian "Reminiscent of Girl, Interrupted …The novel is as bold, shocking and intelligent as its central character…The institutional details (magnolia walls, screwed-down chairs) anchor The Panopticon in realism, giving it a greater bite. Much of Anais’ life is the stuff of tabloid shock stories and The Panopticon ’s strength lies in giving you an insight into the lonely, damaged girl behind the headlines…This week’s winner." – Stylist "An indictment of the care system, this dazzling and distinctive novel has at its heart an unstoppable heroine…Fagan’s prose is fierce, funny and brilliant at capturing her heroine’s sparky smartness and vulnerability…Emotionally explosive."– Marie Claire "Fagan's writing is taut and controlled and the dialogue crackles." – The Herald This is the best debut I’ve read this year...and all because of the character of Anais, who is one of the best narrators I have ever come across.xa0 An essential read."– Living North “Anais’s story is one of abandonment, loss, and redemption, well suited for a paranoid age in which society finds itself constantly under the microscope.” – Publishers Weekly “Dark and disturbing but also exciting and moving, thanks to a memorable heroine and vividly atmospheric prose…Fagan [paints] her battered characters’ fierce loyalty to each other with such conviction and surprising tenderness.”— Kirkus Reviews “Told in Anais’ raw voice, Fagan’s novel peers into the world inhabited by forgotten children, and, in Anais, gives us a heartbreakingly intelligent and sensitive heroine wrapped in an impossibly impenetrable exterior. Readers won’t be able to tear themselves away from this transcendent debut.” – Booklist (starred review) "Anais's ongoing internal dialog, her periodic reimagining of her life and situation, is enthralling...James Kelman's How Late It Was, How Late meets Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest . Not to be missed." – Library Journal (starred review) JENNI FAGAN was born in Scotland. She attended Greenwich University and won a scholarship to the Royal Holloway MFA. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was shortlisted for the Dublin Impac, The James Tait Black,xa0and was named one of Granta 's Best of Young British Novelists. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***Copyrightxa0 © 2016 Jenni Fagan Part INovember 2020, −6 degrees1They are quite clear about it. They use short declarative statements. Capital letters. Red ink. Some points are underlined. In summation: they want everything. It is the end. Dylan uses nail scissors to trim the longest stragglers on his beard, he bends over a row of sinks in the ladies’ and splashes water on his face. He has acted out many roles in front of these mirrors: Jedi, Goonie, zombie, vengeful telekinetic teen—a Soho kid growing up in an art-house cinema: he’d lie onstage in his pajamas watching stars glide across the ceiling for hours. His grandmother used to say that they were keepers of a conclave, a place where people came to feel momentarily safe, to remember who they once were—a thing so often ignored (out there) but in here: lights, camera, action!Dylan pulls on his jumper and heads for the empty foyer. The ticket stall is musty. A trail of empty gin glasses leads to his projection booth. He briefly recalls toasting Tom and Jerry, Man Ray, Herzog and Lynch, Besson and Bergman, the girls from the peep show next door, Hansel, Gretel and all of their friends. He picks up the letter again. Even if she had told him, he couldn’t have done anything. The account is empty. There is less than nothing. The deficit has so many figures he quit counting. A pile of unpaid bills are stacked neatly in Vivienne’s vintage sewing box and when he got back from the crematorium he found an envelope containing the deeds for a caravan 578.3 miles away, with a pink Post‑it note and her scrawl: Bought for cash—no record in any of our accounts. Mum x.What kind of last words are those, exactly?He crumples the Post‑it note, drops it in the bin. It’s typically Vivienne—his mother: the moirologist, every sentence delivered like a eulogy. The woman wore winkle-pickers all her days and swore the purest form of water was gin; her finger would trail along their huge medical encyclopedia (their family bible) hoping to find a rare, incurable disease, something to penetrate her to the bone and never leave her.There was less than six months between one passing and the next.Gunn went first.Then Vivienne.Now he knows something he did not know before—there is a totality to silence.It makes his bones ache.His body has its habits. It is trained to listen for footsteps on the attic stairs each morning. His eyes stray toward the draining board, expecting to find mismatched mugs. The fridge probably still has sliced lemon in Tupperware boxes for a late-night session on the gin. He fills the kettle up enough for three mugs. A stack of records next to Gunn’s gramophone have still not been put back in their sleeves. Their cigarette ends (or Vivienne’s at least) are still in the ashtray. It’s almost like he had thought if he didn’t tidy the place for long enough they’d come back, out of sheer fucking irritation at him.There is an impenetrability to absence.He feels slighted, as if some wider trick has been played. Inconclusivity—rattles! He is a child questioning a magician’s trick. Where is the rabbit? Where is her voice? Where is their laughter? How come their voices were here and now they are not? It’s a basic question. Where exactly have they gone? They have made the ultimate disappearing act. Exit stage left—then the curtains of the magician’s tent flounce shut and a closed sign is placed right in front of it so the living cannot follow.This is only grief—it will not bring them home.He presses his fists into his eyes and swallows down hard. Repossessors will clamp metal shutters over the foyer doors in about ten hours and he will not be here to watch them. No doubt it will only be a matter of months before wealthy city types move into a well-designed property with great original features right in the middle of Soho. They’re doing it to all the businesses that go bust. He picks up a glass, wanting to hurl it with enough force that it could spin all the way through to the future—while the new residents walk around wearing unsubtle signifiers of wealth, the woman (in another room) would just hear a definite clunk one day as her other half took a tumbler to the head and slid perplexed, eyes glazed, down the wall.If he is here when the repossessors arrive with cutters.It won’t end well.Dylan’s footsteps echo in the empty building. He strides along corridors that hold memories from his childhood in each and every nook. It’s all borrowed: bricks; bodies; breathing—it’s all on loan! Eighty years on the planet if you’re lucky; why do they say if you’re lucky ? Eighty years and people trying to get permanent bits of stone before they go, as if permanence were a real thing. Everyone has been taken hostage. Bankers and big business are tyrannical demigods. Where is the comeback? There is no comeback because they own the people who have the guns who are there to keep the people (bankers and big business and governments) fucking safe and now they’re saying on the news it is too little, too late. The temperature is plummeting. Four scientists murdered at the Arctic. By whom?Vast amounts of fresh water are flooding into the ocean from melting polar caps.Environmentalists have been campaigning outside Westminster for weeks.Nobody wants to have sex with him (he hasn’t tried, really).He can’t be bothered breathing anymore.The debt collectors have been to the door twice today. There was a minor scuffle. They said, quite seriously, they’ll take the lot by force if necessary, and they seemed hopeful for that possibility; they quite fancied battering a giant bearded weirdo, just for kicks, perk of the job, a wee added bonus for them. They are gnarly, violent-looking Serbians—if he had a cat they’d likely behead the thing, spike its head on the gates of the city so it could grin at passersby.London is not lined with lollipops.Businesses are closing—everywhere.He should: take the keys to the bailiffs immediately. This is written in red capital letters. That’s not going to happen. If they want his family’s home then they can break in. He’s not handing it to them. Banks are doing this up and down the country; any hint of weakness (which they generate by wrecking the economy) and they swoop in, put great big metal shutters right across the doors, do it up and sell it for a profit. They’ll make a bomb. In all truth, he can’t be in this cinema without his mother and grandmother. This was their place. Everywhere he looks another part of him hurts.Nobody told him grief would be so physical.Adrenaline.Sitting down.Each muscle aching like he has been beaten from head to toe. Grief is in his marrow. It is in his brain. It has even slowed the way he washes his hands. Dylan enters their only auditorium and presses a button on the wall. Red curtains whirr toward each other, they trail across the stage like a dancer’s ballgown in an old film, and he turns on star lights so they glide across the ceiling. He will leave Cinema 1 like this. It’s only right. For the first time in over sixty years there will not be a MacRae in ownership at 345a Fat Boy Lane, Soho. Babylon (the smallest art-house cinema in all of Europe) will no longer glow from the foyer chandelier as people hurry by in the rain.Dylan pulls on socks, boots, grabs a scarf.He packs Vivienne’s old suitcase.Art-deco ashtrays.Clothes.Two cinema reels.The urns are on the popcorn stand and he tries to fit them into the suitcase but it won’t close. He begins to sweat and rummages behind the counter for a plastic bag but there aren’t any. He yanks open cupboards and the box-office till, he looks in the bin, wrenches open the dishwasher—there is an old ice cream tub and a Tupperware container.He takes them out.Places the urns on the counter.Gunn should go in the ice cream tub. It’s bigger. Not that she is likely to have more ashes but she would be less bothered about being in an ice cream tub than Vivienne. Vivienne would be mighty fucking pissed off about traveling anywhere in an ice cream tub. His grandmother wouldn’t give much of a shit. Dylan wishes (not for the first time today) that he had drunk a little less last night. He picks up one urn, then puts it back down again, beginning slightly to panic. He unscrews Gunn’s urn and tips the ashes into the ice cream tub. Some fall onto the floor and he automatically rubs at them with his boot, then looks up and mouths the word Sorry. He lobs that empty urn into the sink and unscrews the other one. He tips Vivienne into the Tupperware container but it fills to the brim too quickly—he can’t fit all of her ashes in there.—Fuck’s sake!Dylan slams drawers and finds a spoon and carefully pats his mother’s ashes down until there is a half inch of space on top. They have to fit in. He can’t take her in two different containers. It wouldn’t be right and anyway there’s only popcorn boxes left and they have no lids! His hands are shaky. He is too hungover for this shit. He needs sugar. Coffee. A wank. More sleep. None of these things are going to happen. He pours in the rest of his mother’s ashes and pats them down, pours the last bit and smoothes them down as well; a cold slick of sweat trickles right down his back as he tries to snap on the lid. He never could get Tupperware container lids on easily. It’s a skill he doesn’t possess.—What’s the fucking deal with this bollocks!The roaring and shaking his fist and stamping his feet doesn’t help, so he stands on it and the Tupperware lid clicks. He gets a bit of gaffer tape and wraps it around just to make sure. He picks them up. What if he forgets which one is which? He could text himself a note: Grandma’s in the ice cream tub, Mum’s in the sandwich box. Instead he rummages around until he finds a roll of stickers and uses a ballpoint to scrawl Gunn on one, then Vivienne with a smiley face on another. Sometimes he has no idea how he made it to thirty-eight. He is always running late, for a start, as if time is the main problem in his life. It seems pretty much all the things people are supposed to have done by his age have passed him by, while he did nothing but develop an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure cinema and the rudimentary skills of distilling gin.That was fine when he was helping to keep the family business afloat.It’s unlikely to impress the job center.Dylan places the containers side by side. They fit neatly into the suitcase now—it’s not the most elegant way to take his mum and grandma back to their homeland but it will do the job. He places a photograph of Gunn, Vivienne and himself as a baby on top and clicks the suitcase shut. Dylan reassures himself that this must be the worst hangover he has ever had in his life and his brain will return to optimum (average) functioning by tomorrow, or the day after at a push. He has at least twelve hours to be vacant on the megabus journey. That thought is soothing. Although the megabus is no doubt a shit-fest of body odor and claustrophobia and every bit of public transport is overcrowded with people panicking, but not so many will be going north like him. There is a hard knot of muscle in his shoulder. He looks for a piece of A4 paper but there isn’t any in the printer, so he grabs a flyer: Les Français vus par (The French as Seen By . . .), 13 minutes long, W. Herzog. He writes carefully on the back and takes it out to place in the Upcoming Screenings sign; the bailiffs won’t cover that up with metal boards:On behalf of Gunn and Vivienne MacRae, I want to say a huge thank-you to all of our faithful customers—it was my family’s privilege to shine a light in the dark here for over sixty years and there is nothing we would rather have done. Running such an extraordinary cinema would not have been possible without all of you. Babylon was our family business but it was also our home. May the film reels (somewhere, for all of us) play on!With Gratitude,Dylan MacRaeLights flash outside the peep show next door. He puts his hand on the glass foyer door and steps back into the dim. Dylan has an image of his mother in his head—she is sitting in the front row wearing a miner’s hat with a lamp on the front, reading in a circle of light but keeping the darkness always close enough to touch. They keep playing. These little film reels in his brain. He wants to go upstairs and find her jumper and put it on, so he can smell her and sit down in the front row and drink all the gin left in the cellar, but he’s sure that would be a bit Bundy or some other random psychopath who had issues with their mother. He has no issues, he just misses them both more than he can take. He picks up the deeds for the caravan, the address, his bus ticket. He grabs her suitcase and pulls the old Exit door closed behind him.It is so cold on the city streets that his skin stings and reddens; he needs to buy warmer clothes, some kind of winter boots. His throat is so tight and constricted it is hard to swallow. He checks his watch and there is still over an hour before the bus leaves, so he heads for the river—he wants to see it before he goes. Red lights flash on and off, lighting up the pavement as he walks away from Babylon. He wants to turn around, but for the very first time in his life there is absolutely nowhere to go back to. With each step forward the road behind him disappears. That’s what it feels like. Just one step back and it would be an endless plummet. His shoes click on the wet pavement. His breath curls on the air. He is going to go along by the river even though it takes longer because for once in his life he has left with time to spare. Ornate lampposts with wrought-iron fish at the bottoms of them sparkle with frost. It is way too early in the year for it to be as Baltic as this, they’ve only just hit November. Read more