BENNETT, CLAIRE-LOUISE
A NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR AND A NEW YORKER "ESSENTIAL READ"
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND VOGUE
Bennett writes like no one else. She is a rare talent, and Checkout 19 is a masterful novel. Karl Ove Knausgaard
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 meetsand dreams upalong 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 losesand findsherself. 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 Bennetts 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.
