Prynne-like mood: ‘None wzm wzm on that here piss crater. This deep, non-linguistic state is probably what she refers to as her ‘first language’ that ‘simmer in the elastic gloom betwixt my flickering organs’ there is a moment when she reaches this, tapping into a J.H. Naming prevents the emergence of another kind of language, ‘the earth’s embedded logos’ which enables one to ‘experience the enriching joy of moving about in deep and direct accordance with things’ (she never descends into facile nature worship, by the way, to the author’s credit). Bennett rejects structuralism, as does her character: she rants against the ‘Pond’ signpost firstly because of its incorrect use as a word (it’s more like a large, shallow puddle), and secondly-more importantly-because naming is for ‘moronic busybodies’ anyway. It’s not just the descriptions of things that change, however: Pond is also a book about the way we approach ‘description’-hence, I think, the reason for the title. This kind of acuity, though hilarious at times, is never ridiculous: Bennett brilliantly manages to convey those dim feelings which stay illiterate in our own selves, through the narrator’s grounded, almost august, Austenian prose. They cut through the fug and smell very organized, and so a sort of structure resumes’. Benign object arrangements, which are usually just ways of setting a scene, unleash the full sensuous force of Bennett’s prose-every detail adds a layer to experience: ‘they are very nice to eat, oranges, when you’ve been having sex for ages. This is the gaze of wonder ( émerveillement) according to Luce Irigaray, and it’s a useful way of getting to grips with the book.īennett’s narrator is an Olympic all-star in linguistic calisthenics, creating wonder through heightened, gorgeous imagery: grass after the rain looks like a ‘squandered chandelier dashing headlong down the hillside’.

Each sentence fissures the ordinary way you look at things, by immersing you in the gaze of a rather eccentric, solitary narrator: objects that are usually taken for granted become alien, to be apprehended again and again, in different ways. Read the first couple of lines and you’re strung along, feverish. Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut short story collection is extraordinary because of what she manages to do in such a presumably mundane, restricted space, without using any traditional plot devices. The musings and memories of an unnamed woman make up the 20 stories in Pond: a series of interconnected narratives, fixed in time and place (2013, an Irish cottage on the Western coast). Pond b y Claire-Louise Bennett - Alexandra d’Abbadie The wildness logo, a stylised W that looks like two upside-down mountain peaks.

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