nick219 's review for:

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett

3.0

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Checkout 19 is many things: a book about books, a book about storytelling, a book about how we converse through the arts we love. But what catapults this book above the generic "book about books" formula is that we see the art begin to consume our unnamed narrator, infecting her growth into adulthood to the point of horror. Like life itself, there is nothing linear in the telling of this story - reading it felt like I was reading four different books at once, every sentence a dark parade, every word infused with minor-chord beauty. In the end, Checkout 19 is a fascinating and off-kilter coming-of-age story about what happens when the art consumes the reader, rather than the other way around.