The Barnes & Noble Review
Into a summer of withering heat, political hysteria, and the potential unraveling of Europe comes Pond, a cool and curious dive into a deceptively small world. First published last year by an independent press in Ireland, the book marks the move by writer Claire-Louise Bennett from a series of essays and short stories, which have earned her critical acclaim, to the sustained voice of a collection. And what a voice it is.
In Pond you tumble down a rabbit hole into an unsettling realm of ultra-close focus. Here the minutiae of daily life — how best to chill a banana, why the ink in a pen has gone from black to green, the sounds of nature as heard from a certain picnic blanket — take on the weight of the universe. Our guide is an enigmatic young woman, the world she inhabits shaped in twenty short . . . stories? What they actually are — studies or chapters or literary etudes — is up for grabs.
There is no plot, no story arc, no characters to meet and learn about. There's just Bennett's voice and her singular vision. In pieces that range in length from a few sentences to more than twenty pages, with all but the final entry written in first person, you're left on your own to figure things out.
Bennett never names her narrator, a onetime graduate student who has recently quit a Ph.D. program. She has left the city behind and taken up residence in a small stone cottage on the western coast of Ireland. The young woman speaks directly to us in rambling monologues, more than a little bit strange, always intense, and often wickedly funny.
When we first meet her it's the banana that holds her attention. This leads to thoughts on the microclimate of a kitchen windowsill, which shifts to an analysis of the contents of a fruit bowl ("Pears should always be small and organized nose to tail in a bowl of their own") and on to a discussion of the pros and cons of various breakfast options.
This pinpoint vision telescopes inward until it feels vertiginous. Bennett offers us mere breadcrumbs, the tiniest building blocks of plot — allusions to a string of lovers, the narrator's realization that she likes sex only when drunk, an old letter so fraught she can neither read nor discard it.
You stumble a bit and waver: will you go on to the next sentence, to the next page? Yes, yes, let's go on — the lovely writing, as precise and disorienting as the narrator, pulls you into its deceptively gentle current.
What with the remote cottage, the obsessive detail and the failed doctoral thesis, which lies abandoned in a shed ("Many of the pages loose, and I knew very well they weren't in any order"), these at first look like writings of a woman in full retreat. It's a surprise, then, in this close and closed-in world, each time the outside world enters.
There's a speaking engagement our narrator accepts at an academic conference, a nearby neighbor whose house she often visits, and a lively summer party she throws because "I have so many glasses after all." At the conference, the narrator gives a bold talk that shrugs off centuries of male perspective on the rhapsodies of love and presents it instead as "a vicious and divine disintegration of selfhood . . . "
Afterward, as the conference participants chat, an academic bigwig looks down his nose at the narrator's speech. Rather than being abashed, she goes in for a bit of bashing. She hopes he will trip and fall and cut his head with "just a trickle of blood so you don't look inured, only stupid and a bit iffy."
The narrator's flight from academia turns out to mirror Bennett's own change of direction. Instead of completing the postgrad work about which she says she felt tepid, Bennett moved from London to Ireland. She left the university behind but not her writing. In Pond, there's a nod to her awareness of the experimental nature of her work, though with its assured style it seems more accurate to view it as an investigation.
"English, strictly speaking, is not my first language by the way," the narrator tells us. "I haven't yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being I use English words in order to say things. I expect I will always have to do it that way; regrettably I don't think my first language can be written down at all. I don't think it can be made external, you see."
And yet, as Bennett shows repeatedly in the strange and exhilarating universe beneath Pond's surface, it can.
Veronique de Turenne is a Los Angeles–based journalist, essayist, and playwright. Her literary criticism appears on NPR and in major American newspapers. One of the highlights of her career was interviewing Vin Scully in his broadcast booth at Dodger Stadium, then receiving a handwritten thank-you note from him a few days later.
Reviewer: Veronique de Turenne
The New York Times Book Review - Meghan O'Rourke
Pond, a sharp, funny and eccentric debut from Claire-Louise Bennett, is one of those books so odd and vivid that they make your own life feel strangely remote…the book's preoccupation with a kind of studied ridding oneself of the superego/organized social self that comes with being an adult works on you, slowly, making you question why so many of our everyday experiences go undescribed…More than anything this book reminded me of the kind of old-fashioned British children's books I read growing up—books steeped in contrarianism and magic, delicious scones and inviting ponds, otherworldly yet bracingly real. Somehow, Bennett has written a fantasy novel for grown-ups that is a kind of extended case for living an existence that threatens to slip out of time…Pond makes the case for Bennett as an innovative writer of real talent. In the United States, we love the maximalist work, the sprawling Great American Novel. But Pond reminds us that small things have great depths. Unlike the pond the narrator lives beside within its pages, Bennett's Pond is anything but shallow.
The New York Times - Dwight Garner
Pond is a slim novel, told in chapters of varying lengths that resemble short stories. There's little in the way of conventional plot. But Ms. Bennett has a voice that leans over the bar and plucks a button off your shirt. It delivers the sensations of Edna O'Brien's rural Irish world by way of Harold Pinter's clipped dictums…Pond is filled with short intellectual junkets into many topics. At other times it drifts, sensually, into chapters that resemble prose poems. You swim through this novel as you do through a lake in midsummer, pushing through both warm eddies and the occasional surprisingly chilly draft from below…As a writer, Ms. Bennett seems to know exactly what to take seriously. She puts us inside a complicated, teeming mind, and she doesn't dabble in forced epiphanies…Ms. Bennett's sensibility here feels like the tip of a deep iceberg, and I'll be in line to read whatever she publishes next. Her witty misanthropy is here to ward off mental scurvy.
Publishers Weekly
★ 05/02/2016
Bennett's debut is a fascinating slim volume that eschews traditional narrative conventions to offer 20 mostly linked sections—it's impossible to classify them strictly as chapters or stories—narrated by a nameless woman living in a small cottage in rural Ireland. The sections vary in length, with some as short as a few sentences, and each offers the reader insight into the rather quiet life of Bennett's narrator. Instead of telling straightforward stories, she wanders in a stream of consciousness manner from one ordeal to the next: lamenting the broken knobs on her kitchen's mini-stove leads to an explanation of a novel about the last woman on Earth; deliberating over the best breakfast meals digresses into a story about gardening. The reader lives in the narrator's head, learning tangentially through her words about her failed attempt at a doctorate, her romantic life, and her unwavering fear of strangers. Yet, despite these revelations, the empty spaces of the narrator's life, left for the reader to fill in, are what make the book captivating. Never do we glean her name, or occupation, or appearance. She is a physical blank slate, there for the reader's imagination to round out. Bennett has achieved something strange, unique, and undeniably wonderful. (July)
From the Publisher
"[An] auspicious debut … Bennett seems to know exactly what to take seriously. She puts us inside a complicated, teeming mind, and she doesn’t dabble in forced epiphanies... Sometimes first novels like Pond are one-offs. They deliver a voice the author can’t tap again. Ms. Bennett’s sensibility here feels like the tip of a deep iceberg, and I’ll be in line to read whatever she publishes next. Her witty misanthropy is here to ward off mental scurvy." –The New York Times
"Imagine a short-story collection written by Emily Dickinson, and you’ll get the weird genius of this book.” –The Boston Globe
“A sharp, funny, and eccentric debut … one of those books so odd and vivid they make your own life feel strangely remote. Somehow, Bennett has written a fantasy novel for grownups that is a kind of extended case for living an existence that threatens to slip out of tune...Pond makes the case for Bennett as an innovative writer of real talent. … [It]reminds us that small things have great depths.” –The New York Times Book Review
“A work of fiction that will make you feel pleasantly insane…Like Lydia Davis, Bennett…takes a state of mind closely associated with madness and places it in settings that are utterly domestic, mundane. The result is fervid and fearful...It is also funny…unnerving… sensitive to the point of being porous…lucid, practical, and excruciatingly cognizant of what is normal.” –The New Yorker
“Dazzling…[an] exquisitely written and daring debut work of fiction…Pond’s lovely strangeness lies in just how intimate we feel with our heroine despite knowing so little about her. By eschewing exposition, Bennett’s novel demonstrates the elucidating power of simply recording a consciousness at work, a state of being – a ‘mind in motion.’” –O, the Oprah Magazine
“The sort of avant-garde opus destined to put its author on the map alongside modern-day prose stylists of the highest order...The tilt of Bennett’s pen (or the stroke of her key) lends gravity to anything it touches… This collection is for wiseasses and weirdos, a cathedral of strange sentences... built upon the singular experience of being a human being. It contains only sharp observations and a constant juggling between beauty and decay, moments stretched and skewed like leaded glass…Pond sparkles with witty one-liners…[a] gorgeous book.” –Los Angeles Review of Books
"[T]his Woolfian novella will challenge all your ideas of narrative. Dreamlike fragments of a life drift in and out of frame, with startling prose that will make your usual perspective feel like sleepwalking." –Elle
“Bennett’s prose—ardent, addictively obsessive-compulsive, a little feral—is from another galaxy, or maybe another century. Her delight in nature and gardening can be kookily romantic…and yet one could also imagine her taking an improbably cheerful seat among the modernists…A man alone is a visionary; a woman alone is a witch—or worse, Bridget Jones. But Bennett spins something entirely different from her separateness, a kind of philosophy of being in the world as a writer both refreshing and hard-won." –Vogue
“Innovative, beguiling…meditative…a fresh new voice from seemingly out of nowhere…Reading Bennett’s book of loosely linked stories is a lovely retreat from the cacophony of contemporary life…wryly intelligent…quirky…[and] brightly original.” –Los Angeles Times
“[A] smart, funny, elliptical debut…Reminiscent of Joyce and Beckett in its unmistakably Irish blend of earthy wit and existential unease. Yet Bennett does much more than emulate literary forebears. Pond expressed her unique sensibility in deceptively simply, delightfully unsettled prose. We’ll be hearing more from this formidably gifted young writer.” –The Boston Globe
"[Pond] contains no story, no action and...one describable character and is defined as much by these absences as by the material that remains. What’s left on the page are the gleanings of a “mind in motion,” to borrow Ms. Bennett’s phrase—reflections on everyday objects, philosophical digressions, daydreams and stirred-up memories and associations... The book is reminiscent of a country diary, with entries that dwell on the narrator’s breakfast routine or her vegetable garden...Hers is a mind in attentive communion with itself, building baroque and beautiful cloud castles of thought to distract from the storms of the real." –Wall Street Journal
“An elegant and intoxicating debut novel…rich with strange, sensuous and exhilarating moods and textures…we are captivated by the narrator’s sharply illuminated interior reality and her lyrical depictions of the nature about her. Boldly defying convention, Pond is an exceptional debut with beautiful hidden depths.” –Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“A fascinating and utterly immersive reading experience that speaks volumes about the author’s creative process and delivers insights in droves...compulsively readable and wacky…[Bennett has] diffused our often confusing and chaotic world into something more manageable, yet all the while making itty-bitty molehills into mountains.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“[A] cool, curious dive into a world of minutiae… intense, and often wickedly funny.” –Christian Science Monitor
“Immediately, the prose in Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond feels new but deeply familiar — like the voice in your head but dialed just to the left. You are dropped into the book without your wits about you, and you may not totally recover them. It’s exhilarating…...[Her] solitude offers the mental freedom to digress and to proclaim and to spend pages on beautifully ludicrous digressions. Within these digressions are details, and idiosyncratic, almost-confessional meditations on those details that would put Knausgaard to shame. This is a woman at her most comfortable, her most confident…I think someone should award [Bennett] a great prize so that she can write us all something new.” –NYMag's The Cut
“Muddiness is not typically a positive description for a narrative, but this mud is sparkling, full of mica and minerals that glitter with color when the sun’s rays hit. It’s through this glistening mud that Bennett’s readers get to mudlark, mucking about in prose that is alternatively deliberate and crisp, surrealistic and unknowable, to find real gems of observation and language… deeply satisfying and refreshing…Bennett stomps all over writing-dude-in-nature territory without having to set a foot off her main character’s property line.” –New Republic
"Sharp and witty…wonderfully discursive…Pond is maybe best understood as an embrace of all that wriggles in the dirt, and an experiment in uncovering that engrossing underworld beneath our more refined and constructed selves through the act of writing. Bennett…writes through the dramatic into something deeper, and the result is a reverie of ‘fervid primary visions,’ the dredging of a riverine mind.” –The Millions
"A phenomenal combination of hilarity and stillness with a weird undercurrent of menace that never quite rises to the surface but always leaves you slightly uneasy even as you are smiling about something brilliant the writer has managed to capture in the short space of a few pages.” –The Awl
“Impressive indeed.” –Vol 1 Brooklyn
“Reminiscent of Norwegian writer Karl Knausgård as much as it is Thoreau and Zadie Smith.” –Refinery29
"Compelling [and] innovative …Bennett’s unique portrait of a persona emerges with an intensity and vision not often seen, or felt, in a debut.” –Poets & Writers
“Pond, in its quirky structure and language, calls to mind the Irish fathers of literary modernism Joyce and Beckett. But then it also echoes Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Carroll's Alice, Thoreau's Walden and, more contemporarily, Strout's Olive Kitteridge, as well as anything by Nicholson Baker…Bennett's narrator is a funny, self-deprecating, observant, opinionated, earthy woman whose mind grasps every detailed string of her rural life and gives it a pull to reveal her curiosity and contented solitude…What a treasure, this woman!” –Shelf Awareness
“Beautiful and brief.” –Brooklyn Magazine
“Ireland is never mentioned outright in Claire-Louise Bennett's debut, but it is undeniably there … even if just in the extraordinary language constructing every sentence… With a rich Irish literary tradition marked by behemoths like W.B. Yeats and James Joyce, there are many books one can pick up to prepare for a trip to Ireland. However, Bennett represents the modern writer who is left to carry on such a mantel; she will not disappoint.” –The Week, “What to Read Based on Where You’re Traveling this Summer”
“[Pond is] packed with vivid imagery of a quiet life, and deep reflections from an unquiet mind. It’s excellent, it’s ravishing, it’ll win a ton of awards, it’ll show up on everyone’s Best of 2016 lists……bravely original.” —Fiction Advocate
“A formally inventive work that slips past traditional storytelling to focus on impression as it chronicles the interior life of a single, unnamed woman dwelling on Ireland’s coast.” -Library Journal
"Mysteriously but wryly told...it is unlike anything else; its 20 stories portray the things we take for granted as being important, vital and worthy of us paying much closer attention." –National Post
"Innovative and elegant...In her celebration of minutiae, Bennett recreates the experience of a believable, uniquely captivating persona. Pond deserves to be discovered and dived into, so thoroughly does Bennett submerge readers into her meticulously dazzling world.” –Booklist (starred)
"Captivating...Bennett has achieved something strange, unique, and undeniably wonderful." –Publisher's Weekly (starred)
"What Bennett aims at is nothing short of a re-enchantment of the world. ... This is a truly stunning debut, beautifully written and profoundly witty." –The Guardian
“A beautiful, lasting book that privileges modes of human experience that are so often undervalued, if they are acknowledged at all: neither formative encounters nor outward achievement, but rather the workings of a roving, inquisitive mind, open and receptive to all.” –Literary Review (London)
“[An] artful collection of shut-in soliloquies…striking.” -The Telegraph, “What to Read in 2015”
“Elegantly inventive.” –Financial Times
“A wild, rewardingly ecstatic ride.” –The Globe and Mail
“Elegant and funny and seems to find a whole new space in the form.” –Eimear McBride, TLS, “Books of the Year”
“A touch of William Gaddis. A touch of Lydia Davis. A touch of Samuel Beckett. A touch of Edna O'Brien. And yet Claire-Louise Bennett's POND feels entirely unique. Quiet and luxurious all at once, this will be one of the most sensational debuts of the year.” —Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin
"Claire-Louise Bennett sets the conventions of literary fiction ablaze in this ferociously intelligent and funny debut. Don't be fooled by Pond's small size. It contains multitudes." —Jenny Offill, author of Department of Speculation
"Pond is brilliant — sharp and absorbing, compassionate and funny — and Claire-Louise Bennett is a deeply original writer with talent to spare. I can't stop thinking about this book."
—Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
"As brilliant a debut and as distinct a voice as we've heard in years—this is a real writer with the real goods."—Kevin Barry, author of Beatlebone and City of Bohane
“I’d heard more good whispers about Pond than almost any other debut this year. . . . These stories are intelligent and funny, innovative and provocative, and it’s impossible to read them without thinking that here is a writer who has only just begun to show what she can do.” —Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing
“Extraordinary . . . profoundly original though not eccentric, sharp and tender, funny and deeply engaging. A very new sort of writing . . . an acute, satisfying, delicate, honest meditation on both the joys and frustrations of a life fully lived in solitude. Take it slowly, because it is worth it, and be impressed and joyful.” —Sara Maitland, author of A Book of Silence
“Wielding a wry but implacable logic, Claire-Louise Bennett dives under the surface of ‘ordinary’ experiences and things to reveal their supreme and giddy illogic. Like . . . Lydia Davis . . . she writes an impeccable affectless prose that almost magically arrives at something extraordinary.” —Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick
“Claire-Louise Bennett is a major writer to be discovered and treasured.” —Deborah Levy, author of Swimming Home
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"Bennett has achieved something strange, unique, and undeniably wonderful." —Publishers Weekly Starred Review
AUGUST 2016 - AudioFile
This unconventional audiobook challenges the listener to be open, inquisitive, and patient. While Lucy Rayner's narration is lovely in its oddly engaging detachment, the novel itself lacks a traditional linear plot. Instead, one must be content to immerse oneself in a series of loosely connected stories about an unnamed narrator whose untethered thoughts meander from observations to inspirations to regrets. Rayner's performance creates a solitary personality: a sometimes accessible and likable narrator and sometimes inscrutable and unknowable one. Adding more of a pause between the stories would aid the listener; as is, the brisk delivery adds to the sense of stream-of-consciousness flow. Rayner's adept vocal performance and Bennett's intriguing prose make for an interesting listen for dedicated listeners. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-04-13
First published in Ireland, Bennett's meditative debut—rigorous, poetic, and often very funny—captures the rich inner life of a young woman living a mostly solitary existence in a remote coastal town. An interior portrait in 20 fragments—some short-story length, others just a few sentences—this collection abandons conventional notions of plot altogether. Nothing much "happens" here; there is essentially no "action"—at least, not by any traditional definition of the term. Instead, Bennett presents a series of exquisitely detailed, deeply subjective, frequently hilarious monologues on the business of being alive. Despite her constant presence, we know very few biographical facts about our nameless heroine. But we see the way her mind works, and we get to know her—deeply, even intimately—through her observations. In "Morning, Noon & Night," she recounts bits and pieces of a past romance ("We didn't get along very well but this had no bearing whatsoever on our sexual rapport which was impervious and persuasive and made every other dwindling aspect of our relationship quite irrelevant for some time"); in "Control Knobs," she chronicles—among many, many other, less tangible things—her quest to get the broken knob on her "decrepit cooking device" fixed. "Stir-fry" is just two bare sentences. "I just threw my dinner in the bin. I knew as I was making it I was going to do that, so I put in it all the things I never want to see again." It feels both crass and inaccurate to reduce any chapter to a single "about"; each fragment is simultaneously hyperspecific and sweeping. Short as it is, this is a demanding read: with its sharp, winding sentences, it's not a book that washes over you but a book that you work for. But the attention pays off: quietly striking, Bennett's debut lingers long after the last page. Strange and lyrical with an acute sense of humor.
