News Summary

• Claire-Louise Bennett's debut, Pond, details the quotidian life of an Englishwoman living alone in a cottage on the western coast of Ireland.
• Bennett’s second book, Checkout 19 (2021), opens with an account, narrated in the collective “we,” of the experience of reading a book.
• The words on the right seem far too eager, over-bearing, and yes somewhat ingratiating in fact, and very soon our rattled eyes leave the right page in order to seek refuge in the left.