Entrapment and Liberation

Throughout the novel the author uses her unconventional approach to point of view, structure, form, and language in order to enact her explorations concerning entrapment and liberation. Instead of modeling Checkout 19 after a traditional narrative plot line, the author obscures time and space and blurs the boundaries between reality and surreality. From one chapter to the next, the narrator’s voice shifts between the first person plural, first person singular, third person, and second person points of view. Her memories blur with her imaginings, her writings, and her lived experiences. The novel thus lacks a recognizable timeline or neat narrative progression.

These formal distortions are manifestations of the narrator’s rebellion against the limitations, expectations, and strictures she feels desperate to escape as an artist and a woman. In Chapter II, “Bright Spark,” the author uses images of the narrator’s menstrual blood, tampons...