The Panopticon: A Novel

"Anais Hendricks is only 15, but she’s been in trouble for years. She has a serious drug habit, she’s been in foster homes since birth, and she may have put a police officer in a coma. Now, she’s been sent to live in the Panopticon, a social-work housing experiment for young people. All of the units face inward toward a tower full of guards, watching the inmates. And believe me, it’s worth watching Anais, one of my favorite heroines of the year. The plot of The Panopticon is really secondary to the roller coaster of character that is Anais — her intense, first-person narration illuminates the horrors of a young woman failed again and again by the system in Scotland, but does it by suffusing the reader with her own funny, compassionate, hard-as-nails self. By the end of the book, you’ll know a lot of Scottish slang, which may or may not stick with you. Anais, however, most certainly will."