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Checkout 19
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Claire-Louise Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
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Publisher's summary
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 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.
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Critic reviews
“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
“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
“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
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- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
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Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
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A Fatal Inversion
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: William Gaminara
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the long, hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall’s animal cemetery. Which woman? And whose child?
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Oh my!
- By Jill on 06-15-14
By: Barbara Vine
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Some Kind of Fairy Tale
- A Novel
- By: Graham Joyce
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Twenty years ago, 16-year-old Tara Martin disappeared from a small town in the heart of England. Now, her sudden return and the mind-bending tale of where she’s been will challenge our very perception of the truth. For 20 years after Tara Martin disappeared, her parents and her brother, Peter, lived in denial of the grim fact that she was gone for good. Then suddenly on Christmas Day, the doorbell rings at her parents’ home, and there, dishevelled and slightly peculiar looking, Tara stands. It’s a miracle, but alarm bells are ringing for Peter. Tara’s story just does not add up.
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Extremely Well Done
- By Amanda on 07-11-12
By: Graham Joyce
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The Poison Tree
- By: Erin Kelly
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Successful journalist Erin Kelly has electrified readers and critics alike with her debut novel The Poison Tree. In this scintillating work, Karen and her daughter Alice have established a safe, happy life free from the madness of Karen’s past. But when Karen’s former lover Rex is released from prison, her old associations intrude upon the present - and threaten everything she holds dear.
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I couldn't stop listening the book.
- By Gladys on 07-29-15
By: Erin Kelly
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East of the Sun
- By: Julia Gregson
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 19 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Autumn 1928. Three young women are on their way to India, each with a new life in mind. Rose, a beautiful but naive bride-to-be, is anxious about leaving her family and marrying a man she hardly knows. Victoria, her bridesmaid couldn't be happier to get away from her overbearing mother, and is determined to find herself a husband. And Viva, their inexperienced chaperone, is in search of the India of her childhood, ghosts from the past and freedom.
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Indian history takes a back seat to 3 young women
- By Richard on 05-24-16
By: Julia Gregson
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Fragile Things
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: Neil Gaiman
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Marvelous creations, including a short story set in the world of The Matrix and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction, can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his entertaining (and dark) sense of humor.
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Perhaps a different format?
- By Karen on 11-03-10
By: Neil Gaiman
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The Secret Keeper
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
England, 1959: Laurel Nicolson is 16 years old, dreaming alone in her childhood tree house during a family celebration at their home, Green Acres Farm. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and then observes her mother, Dorothy, speaking to him. And then she witnesses a crime.
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Kate Morton (and Caroline Lee) does it again!
- By Maria on 10-20-12
By: Kate Morton
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London Fields
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey
- Length: 21 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing who is intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts; or the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch. As Nicola leads her suitors towards the precipice, London--and, indeed, the whole world--seems to shamble after them in a corrosively funny novel of complexity and morality.
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Big chewy novel, excellent narration
- By Sand on 08-21-14
By: Martin Amis
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Autumn
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Melody Grove
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of Pop Art, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.
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Incredible use of language
- By Mary on 03-06-17
By: Ali Smith
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Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nanzeen's inauspicious birth in a Bangladeshi village imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents. Married off to a man old enough to be her father, Nanzeen moves to London and cares for her family. But gradually she begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters and her new world.
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A truly wonderful book!
- By A M on 11-24-03
By: Monica Ali
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The Things We Never Said
- By: Susan Elliot Wright
- Narrated by: Kate Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1964, Maggie wakes to find herself in a mental asylum, with no idea who she is or how she got there. Remnants of memories swirl in her mind - a familiar song, a storm, a moment of violence. Slowly, she begins to piece together the past and the events which brought her to this point.
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Disappointing
- By Anonymous User on 01-18-22
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Good concept, poor execution
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At twenty-four, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She’s sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet—a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds—introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him.
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great writing but horrible story
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I downloaded this because I miss my physical copy
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Miranda Popkey's first novel is about desire, disgust, motherhood, loneliness, art, pain, feminism, anger, envy, guilt - written in language that sizzles with intelligence and eroticism. The novel is composed almost exclusively of conversations between women - the stories they tell each other, and the stories they tell themselves, about shame and love, infidelity and self-sabotage - and careens through 20 years in the life of an unnamed narrator hungry for experience and bent on upending her life.
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Good concept, poor execution
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Green Dot
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Excellent narration
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Worst book I’ve ever read
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Bran’s Southern California upbringing is anything but traditional. After her mother joins a Buddhist colony, Bran is raised by her “common-law stepfather” on Bourdon Farms—a plant nursery that doubles as a cover for a biker gang. She spends her days tending plants, slogging through high school, and imagining what life could be if she had been born to a different family.
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Needed a better ending.
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Forgotten on Sunday
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The love story of a Lucien and Alain being intertwined with the two orphans.
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It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
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The Furrows
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Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother, Wayne, is seven. One day, when they’re alone together, there is an accident and Wayne is lost forever. His body is never recovered. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt. Their father leaves, starts another family elsewhere. But their mother can’t give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children. As C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in bistros, airplane aisles, subway cars.
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Appreciate the effort, but not a fan
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An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home. She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: Her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into controversy when she’s asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes.
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A Serious Book
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Strangers to Ourselves
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In a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel—until it no longer does.
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Just Falls Short ...
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Birnam Wood
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A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
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Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
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Breasts and Eggs
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Breasts & Eggs paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own. It tells the story of three women: the 30-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has traveled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent.
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Masterful Writing and Performance
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What listeners say about Checkout 19
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Friend in NYC
- 12-13-23
A few too many shards
I loved the innovative storytelling and the channeling of Anne Quinn or Virginia Woolf or Leonora Carrington in this piece. Super high marks for the attempt. And I'm sure part of my disappointment comes from missing cues I wish I were smart-enough or informed-enough to have recognized. I am sure its very clever for the bits I did recognize, I really enjoyed.
Bennett masterfully contrasts the brainy aspirations the narrator has formed from her imaginings and the things she has read on the page with the reality of her life at checkout-19. Despite this juxtaposition, In terms of eliciting an emotional response, this book did not do it. I felt nothing.
Although the pacing felt slow and the hiccuping style dragged on the story, I never found the book dreary or boring. There were spells when I was lost in the shattered fragments, not sure if I was in the narrator's imagination, in her reality, or in some story she had written. Despite losing the thread of the story, I remained engaged. This must be due to the repetition and poetic voice. Anyway, I did like this book. I found it very intriguing.
I think what she is doing is artful and clever. I'm not sure it is entirely successful.
I wish the story stayed with the exploration of her creativity and didn't get sidetracked into all the other aspects of her life. I feel the style lent itself very well to showing us how thoughts drift in, drift out, develop, grow, fade, vanish, become monstrous, turn into a tale, resolve. But when she was trying to tell the story of a women from a poor area of Brighton, I felt the style choice was in the way. Still, Kudos to Bennett for the attempt and for making it onto the NYTimes Best Books of 2022. I'm quite sure it deserved that ranking. I recommand any struggling fiction writer to read it. Butt keep an open mind.
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- H. O'Hollaren
- 03-10-23
Hmmm …
A strange story. Yes. That’s right. But beautiful writing. Once I sat back and stopped trying to follow every incongruous thread and simply let the words wash over me like poetry I enjoyed the experience a lot more.
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- S. spronsen
- 08-28-24
Interesting
Very interesting and unusual book - I enjoyed it. Strange and varied it's worth a read
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- Edward M Knapp
- 01-11-23
Almost poetry
Beautifully written, put me right there, felt like poetry at times . Loved the off ramps and tangents
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- Julie J
- 02-18-23
Fascinating
I loved this insightful story about how a writer’s mind works - the narration was incredible - I definitely want to read more of her writing.
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- Maurice
- 03-16-24
Magical original cheeky limpid
Most astounding book I’ve read in years. Recommended by another great genius, Sebastian Barry. I am rereading it now!
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- Lisa J. McManaman
- 12-16-22
NY Times bestseller?
I don’t think I’m smart enough or well-read enough to enjoy this strange book! Many books referenced. (Millions of books) Words, images, stories not linked to any plot-line that I could decipher. Except for Tarquin Superbus of course! Wonderful British presentation by the author!!
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- Timothy P. Kelly
- 09-06-23
Smart woman comes of Age in Brittain
A book, a novel, stream of consciously, of a woman talking to herself. Brilliant! And beautifully read.
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- Ryan Young
- 01-18-23
Alternatingly fascinating and frustrating
I'll begin by saying that I am confident that there are people who will love this book. The structure of the prose is interesting and often delightful, reminiscent of Virginia Woolf. I've seen some people describe the writing style as stream of consciousness, which is as good a description as any, I suppose, but I feel that that term suggests a level of internal logic to the long digressions (this thought naturally leads to that thought naturally leads to a third thought) that this book lacks. While there are passages that follow a natural flow of ideas, these are often disrupted by abrupt changes of topic that leave the reader temporarily disoriented. That is not necessarily a bad thing--in some ways it is even thrilling--but more often than not, these shifts left me feeling disconnected and disinvested.
My chief complaint is that I often found the narrator to be insufferable and rather juvenile. For example, the lengthy third chapter is organized entirely around a braggadocious list of all the books and authors the narrator has read--the sort of showing off that I might have done in my twenties. There is also a passage in which the narrator attributes mystic powers to the written word with a naive earnestness that recalls the melodrama of Dead Poets Society, a film which I admit enthralled me in my younger days and imbued me with just the sort of youthful intellectual snobbery that would have led me to brag about all the books and authors I had read. I recognize that my negative feelings about the narrator arise, in part, because I had difficulty identifying with the character, being separated from her both by gender and by age (although I rarely have difficulty at least sympathizing with female characters). But there were certainly moments that I felt I was supposed to instantly recognize as universal (or at least common) experiences--a la Proust's description of the flood of memories brought on by encountering a familiar taste or odor (e.g., the tea and madeleines)--that simply did not resonate with me. (Are there people who share the narrator's resentment of the last paragraph on right pages?)
Ultimately, I must conclude that this book is simply not for me, and that is perfectly all right. There will be people who see themselves in the narrator and understand the world and their own experiences better because of her observations.
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- Diana Garcia
- 04-26-23
Extraordinary
Claire-Louise Bennett breaks the mold, and I am so taken by her writing that I've now both listened to and read this book, and I imagine I will do so again. A champion of the outsider and a pioneer. This is not a color-by-numbers read and to that I say, bravo!
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