Checkout 19

 Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennet

This was.....unexpected. At first I thought the author couldn't possibly be serious, but now, after reading the rest of it, I'm more inclined to think she's a genius. 

With no dialogue and no paragraphs, just a few spaces to divide sections, what we read is whatever occurs in the mind of the girl who remains nameless throughout. We come to know and understand her, a little anyway, through her thoughts, memories, the books she reads, and the stories she writes. 

She alternates using I and We in reference to herself. In the I sections she talks rationally about her life, sounding far more stable than in the We sections. In those she's obsessive and anxious, overthinking even the simplest of things to a point of panic. 

She repeats words and phrases over and over again, maybe to reassure herself of the validity of her own thoughts, and speaks often about feeling apart, outside of the world looking in. Trauma from an abusive ex-boyfriend, and witnessing a deeply disturbing death, are at least partly responsible for her troubled thinking. She struggles with grounding herself in reality but there is no mention of a diagnosed mental health issue. Books are a lifeline and an escape for her, but also an obsession and a source of stress themselves at times.

Being in her head was so intense I had to put the book down and walk away at one point, but coming back I was pulled in again and could not look away till it was done. It was so real. It's a book you read cringing one minute and admiring the next, wishing you could have written this. I waiver between having no words to describe it and too many. It was upsetting, confusing, messy, brilliant, frustrating, painful, fascinating, sad, frightening, strange, and beautiful.

It was hard on the head. And good, so good.