Pond

Pond

Shortlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas PrizeÂ
Named one of The Millions'Â Most Anticpated Books of 2016

â€œA sharp, funny, and eccentric debut â€¦ Pond makes the case for Bennett as an innovative writer of real talent. â€¦ [It]reminds us that small things have great depths.â€â€“New York Times Book Review

"Dazzlingâ€¦exquisitely written and daring ." â€“O, the Oprah Magazine

Immediately upon its publication in Ireland, Claire-Louise Bennettâ€™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 experienceâ€”from the best way to eat porridge or bananas to an encounter with cowsâ€”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 disappointmentsâ€”the ending of an affair, or the ambivalent beginning with a new lover. As the narratorâ€™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.

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Riverhead Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-07-12
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Riverhead Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2016-07-12
Format	Kindle eBook

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