POND

Feverish and forthright, Pond is an absorbing chronicle of the pitfalls and pleasures of a solitudinous life told by an unnamed woman living on the cusp of a coastal town. Broken bowls, belligerent cows, swanky aubergines, trembling moonrises and horrifying sunsets, the physical world depicted in these stories is unsettling yet intimately familiar and soon takes on a life of its own.
Captivated by the stellar charms of seclusion but restless with desire, the woman’s relationship with her surroundings becomes boundless and increasingly bewildering. Claire-Louise Bennett’s startlingly original first collection slips effortlessly between worlds and is by turns darkly funny and deeply moving.

Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and moved to Ireland after graduating from Roehampton University. Her fiction and essays have appeared in a number of publications including The White Review, The Stinging Fly, Harper’s Magazine, and the New Yorker. She was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize in 2013. Pond was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Bennett’s second book, Checkout 19, was published in the UK in 2021.

'This is an extraordinary collection of short stories - profoundly original though not eccentric, sharp and tender, funny and deeply engaging. A very new sort of writing, Bennett pushes the boundaries of the short story out into new territory: part prose fiction, part stream of consciousness, often truly poetry and always 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; 'I'd heard more good whispers about Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett than almost any other debut this year so, by the time I read it, expectations were high and - as it turned out - not disappointed. 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; 'Wielding a wry but implacable logic, Claire-Louse Bennett dives under the surface of "ordinary" experiences and things to reveal their supreme and giddy illogic. Like Gail Scott and Lydia Davis before her, she writes an impeccable affect-less 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; '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 City of Bohane