Checkout 19

The recursiveness and self-absorption of Claire-Louise Bennett's second novel, Checkout 19, will put a lot of readers off: the story is told in the form of a continuous monologue by a bright young woman who looks back on her life through her literary experiences. But underneath the sometimes heavy and overwritten story are some enchanting moments about the power of books and reading:

We were students of literature but we didn’t read in order to become clever and pass our exams with the highest commendations – we read in order to come to life. We were supremely adept at detecting metaphors, signs, analogies, portents – in books, and in our immediate realities. We confused life with literature and made the mistake of believing that everything going on around us was telling us something, something about our own little existence our own undeveloped hearts, and, most crucially of all, about what was to come.

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Certain sentences do not feel in the least bit separate from you or from the moment in time when you are reading them … like they wouldn’t exist without you. And isn’t the opposite true too — that the pages you read bring you to life?

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We look down at the right page and up at the left page. We do actually. And we nearly always read the left page much more slowly than the right.

Recommended.