Synopses & Reviews
From the author of the "dazzling. . . . and daring" Pond (O magazine), the adventures of a young woman discovering her own genius, through the people she meets-and dreams up-along the way.
In a working-class town in a county west of London, a schoolgirl scribbles stories in the back pages of her exercise book, intoxicated by the first sparks of her imagination. As she grows, everything and everyone she encounters become fuel for a burning talent. The large Russian man in the ancient maroon car who careens around the grocery store where she works as a checkout clerk, and slips her a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. The growing heaps of other books in which she loses-and finds-herself. Even the derailing of a friendship, in a devastating violation. The thrill of learning to conjure characters and scenarios in her head is matched by the exhilaration of forging her own way in the world, the two kinds of ingenuity kindling to a brilliant conflagration.
Exceeding the extraordinary promise of Bennett's mold-shattering debut, Checkout 19 is a radical affirmation of the power of the imagination and the magic escape those who master it open to us all.
Review
"Rarely has a book astonished me as much as Claire-Louise Bennett's 2015 debut, Pond. . . . so unusual, and so unsettlingly pleasurable, that I thought it would be greedy to hope Bennett's new novel, Checkout 19, would be better. Lucky me: it is." NPR.com
Review
"If you've had your fill of autofiction, thanks — don't lose interest just yet. . . . The life Bennett describes is one blown open by imaginative writing ... and by the transformative and transportive nature of reading." The New York Times
Review
"Wildly imaginative, unabashedly odd and mordantly funny . . . . This book-full-of-books is a gift and proof of a rare talent. . . . a volume to be consumed whole, on one long, strange trip. . . . [in which] the deep magic of writing is revealed." Los Angeles Times
Review
"Singular. . . The prized darkness at the center of the human mind, the place where whatever is really real about us resides, is what Checkout 19 dedicates itself to protecting." The New Yorker
About the Author
Claire-Louise Bennett is the author of Pond, which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and won the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize. Her short fiction and essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and other publications. She lives in Galway, Ireland.