Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett

 

Pond

by Claire-Louise Bennett

In Pond, an unnamed English woman lives alone in a small cottage in western Ireland where she muses through twenty short stories, which are more like snippets of her solitary life.

She talks about bananas and oatcakes, Spanish oranges after sex, taking a bath, the missing knobs on her small oven. The woman focuses on the small things in her life, or simple things that happen to her that her mind takes on tangents, lifting the mundane into the extraordinary. It is not a novel that is easy to classify. The prose is meandering and beautiful, with a touch of the classic style where commas and asides are prevalent. At times it reads like a journal, at others like short story. It is a novel full of atmosphere.

And atmosphere is what Bennett herself cites in a discussion with Philip Maughan from The Paris Review in an interview about the book. Bennett talks about solitude as lending itself to atmosphere because being alone is "nullifying, terrifying" and sometimes "glorious." She states that Pond is the desire to connect with the physical, instead of the theoretical, exploring what is there and what is missing, both in the physical and within the self. The narrator focuses outward to the environment, objects, and creatures that inhabit the spaces, as well as patterns, connections, and associations, avoiding a focus on the person. It is about being alert and receptive.

Bennett says she thinks of Pond as a love story, the madness and mystery of love. There is a searching outside of the self, as well as what's inside, and being alone gets you outside of yourself.

This book will definitely benefit from re-reading. I think there is so much more there than what I can understand from reading it just once. The narrator is at times self-absorbed, then admits to not really thinking deeply about situations. There is a hypocritical air to the book. She is both sensitive and flippant, worried and terrified, yet courageous. I am tentatively giving Pond 4 stars, but I think that could change.

Work cited:

Maugham, Philip. (July 18, 2016). "The Mind in Solitude: An Interview with Claire-Louise Bennett. The Paris Review. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/07/18/the-mind-in-solitude-an-interview-with-claire-louise-bennett/