Writing, one could say, is Bennett’s true subject, but even that may be too specific: There is an entire section of the book that retells a Calvino-esque fable that the narrator is supposed to have written in her 20s about a gentleman who acquires a vast library only to realize that the entire collection contains only one single sentence capable of unlocking the totality of the receiver’s perception, even if they cannot read. But, as she draws, suddenly “the line broke off into words, just a few words, then a few words more, and the words set out a story, as if it had been there all along.” The narrator has already spent a childhood immersed in books, and her story, and the enthusiastic response it garners from its subject when he spots it-to her shock-in her exercise book, cements the narrator’s path further into her artistry and its expression through writing. Inside her secondary school classroom, she has opened her exercise book to the back, where she first attempts to sketch a portrait of her absent male teacher in pen.
In the second section of what is labeled as a novel-but which really reads as something genre-less and unique-the young narrator writes her first story. A woman with a striking resemblance to the author recounts her life as a reader and writer.
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