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"Longlisted 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 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 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 experience--from the best way to eat porridge or bananas to an encounter with cows--rendered 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 disappointments--the ending of an affair, or the ambivalent beginning with a new lover. As the narrator's 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"--
"A tour de force fiction debut, darkly humorous and utterly original, in which the habits and observations of a solitary young woman illuminate her inner life with uncanny, irresistible intimacy"--… (more)
FYI Review - This collection of short stories contains the followingt: -Voyage in the Dark -Morning, Noon & Night -First Thing -The Big Day -Wishful Thinking -A Little Before Seven -To a God Unknown -Two Weeks Since -Stir-fry -Finishing Touch -Control Knobs -Postcard -The Deepest Sea -Oh, Tomato Puree! -Morning, 1908 -The Gloves are Off -Over & Done With -Words Escape me -Lady of the House -Old Ground
I sometimes didn't know what was going on—but that was perfectly OK, and even, dare I say, right. I feel there's some mystery at the end that I'll spend the rest of my life unsuccessfully, yet sort of thrillingly, trying to figure out. ( )
I do love me some quirky books. But they have to be special, elevated quirky books, as at this point I have read quite a few. The voice here is odd -- maybe doesn't connect with me most of the time. Example: going on and on about replacement cooker control knobs? Some things are very random here. I'd say most things within the book. I never really get a handle on the character, the purpose of the book. And when the purpose was lost to me, and so much is so random, I started to tune out. I don't want to call it frivolous.... but the topics here seem to lean that way when you are otherwise thinking of heavy real life things. So the timing of reading this book might sway a reader's perception of it. I don't want to be unfair to any book, if it is my fault as a reader. But I think I have read a few books like this, variations on this theme, that are really some of my favorite haunting books. My favorite chapter was 'Morning,1908' -- which I have since found was published by itself... so maybe this is why the book seems so scattered to me. It might be unrelated pieces published together? One tag calls it "short stories", so there you go. ( )
I completely agree with the reviews that say this reading experience is similar to that of being stuck in conversation with the egomaniacal person at a party who just never stops talking. ( )
Very pleased to have read this work from a brand new writer. The NY Times had a very nice review of the book which prompted me to try it. Very introspective but spare and economical, and really quite funny. Wonderful words and sentences and paragraphs. Not sure if it is a novel or related short stories, but who cares. Wonderful!
For now in every exuberant joy there is heard an undertone of terror, or else a wistful lament over an irrecoverable loss. It is as though ... nature were bemoaning the fact of her fragmentation, her decomposition into separate individuals. -Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
Could it be that any apartment, any one at all, might eventually become a burrow? Would any place eventually welcome me into its dim, warm, reassuring, kindly light? -Natalia Ginzburg, "A Place to Live"
Wolves in shells are crueller than stray ones. -Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Dedication
First words
First of all, it seemed to us that you were very handsome. And the principal windows of your house were perfectly positioned to display a blazing reflection at sunset. One evening while walking back from the fields this effect was so dramatic we thought your rooms were burning. -Voyage in the Dark
Quotations
Last words
Morning stands on its high swing and waits, shunting the dirt back and forth beneath its nails with a bare piece of card.
"Longlisted 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 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 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 experience--from the best way to eat porridge or bananas to an encounter with cows--rendered 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 disappointments--the ending of an affair, or the ambivalent beginning with a new lover. As the narrator's 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"--
"A tour de force fiction debut, darkly humorous and utterly original, in which the habits and observations of a solitary young woman illuminate her inner life with uncanny, irresistible intimacy"--
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6
-Voyage in the Dark
-Morning, Noon & Night
-First Thing
-The Big Day
-Wishful Thinking
-A Little Before Seven
-To a God Unknown
-Two Weeks Since
-Stir-fry
-Finishing Touch
-Control Knobs
-Postcard
-The Deepest Sea
-Oh, Tomato Puree!
-Morning, 1908
-The Gloves are Off
-Over & Done With
-Words Escape me
-Lady of the House
-Old Ground