โ Scribed by Claire-Louise Bennett
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
**Shortlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize
"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**
Immediately upon its publication in Ireland, Claire-Louise Bennetts debut began to attract attention well beyond the expectations of the tiny Irish press that published it. A deceptively slender volume, it captures with utterly mesmerizing virtuosity the interior reality of its unnamed protagonist, a young woman living a singular and mostly solitary existence on the outskirts of a small coastal village. Sidestepping the usual conventions of narrative, it focuses on the details of her daily experiencefrom the best way to eat porridge or bananas to an encounter with cowsrendered sometimes in story-length, story-like stretches of narrative, sometimes in fragments no longer than a page, but always suffused with the hypersaturated, almost synesthetic intensity of the physical world that we remember from childhood. The effect is of character refracted and ventriloquized by environment, catching as it bounces her longings, frustrations, and disappointmentsthe ending of an affair, or the ambivalent beginning with a new lover. As the narrators persona emerges in all its eccentricity, sometimes painfully and often hilariously, we cannot help but see mirrored there our own fraught desires and limitations, and our own fugitive desire, despite everything, to be known.
Shimmering and unusual, Pond demands to be devoured in a single sitting that will linger long after the last page.
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*Praise for Pond
**"A gorgeous debut...that enchants to the final page."Vogue**
**"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*
"Compelling [and] innovative Bennetts 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 BakerBennett'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 solitudeWhat a treasure, this woman!* Shelf Awareness
*"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 acknowledgedat 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 soliloquiesstriking. -The Telegraph, What to Read in 2015
Elegantly inventive. Financial Times
Remarkablecompelling, uncategorizable, and at times very funny. -TLS
Elegant and funny and seems to find a whole new space in the form. Eimear McBride, TLS, Books of the Year
By turns funny, sexy, poignant and caustic, Pond is a strange, poetic and beautiful debutit pushes the boundaries of what a novel can beClaire-Louise Bennett is very much the real deal. - The Workshy Fop
A fresh 21st century version of the modernist stream of consciousness [Bennetts] ability to smoothly merge everyday activities and lifeless entities, such as ottomans and control knobs, with more profound considerations and past experiences is rare and uncannya promising author to keep an eye on. The Skinny
Stunning. *Bookmunch
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*
Id heard more good whispers about Pond than almost any other debut this year. . . . These stories are intelligent and funny, innovative and provocative, and its 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
*Claire-Louise Bennetts* short fiction and essays have been published in The Moth, The Irish Times, and other publications. She was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize in 2013. Pond is her first book. Bennett lives in Galway, Ireland.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
-- The Millions' "A sharp, funny, and eccentric debut? -- O, the Oprah Magazine Immediately upon its publication in Ireland, Claire-Louise Bennett?s debut began to attract attention well beyond the expectations of the tiny Irish press that published it. A deceptively slender volume, it captures with
**Shortlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize Named one of *The Millions'* Most Anticpated Books of 2016 "A sharp, funny, and eccentric debut ... *Pond* makes the case for Bennett as an innovative writer of real talent. ... [It]reminds us that small things have great depths."**โ**
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