Sold Out
Book Categories |
"[An] auspicious debut ⊠Bennett seems to know exactly what to take seriously. She puts us inside a complicated, teeming mind, and she doesnât dabble in forced epiphanies... Sometimes first novels like Pond are one-offs. They deliver a voice the author canât tap again. Ms. Bennettâs sensibility here feels like the tip of a deep iceberg, and Iâll be in line to read whatever she publishes next. Her witty misanthropy is here to ward off mental scurvy." âThe New York Times
"Imagine a short-story collection written by Emily Dickinson, and youâll get the weird genius of this book.â âThe Boston Globe
âA sharp, funny, and eccentric debut ⊠one of those books so odd and vivid they make your own life feel strangely remote. Somehow, Bennett has written a fantasy novel for grownups that is a kind of extended case for living an existence that threatens to slip out of tune...Pond makes the case for Bennett as an innovative writer of real talent. ⊠[It]reminds us that small things have great depths.â âThe New York Times Book Review
âA work of fiction that will make you feel pleasantly insaneâŠLike Lydia Davis, BennettâŠtakes a state of mind closely associated with madness and places it in settings that are utterly domestic, mundane. The result is fervid and fearful...It is also funnyâŠunnerving⊠sensitive to the point of being porousâŠlucid, practical, and excruciatingly cognizant of what is normal.â âThe New Yorker
âDazzlingâŠ[an] exquisitely written and daring debut work of fictionâŠPondâs lovely strangeness lies in just how intimate we feel with our heroine despite knowing so little about her. By eschewing exposition, Bennettâs novel demonstrates the elucidating power of simply recording a consciousness at work, a state of being â a âmind in motion.â âO, the Oprah Magazine
âThe sort of avant-garde opus destined to put its author on the map alongside modern-day prose stylists of the highest order...The tilt of Bennettâs pen (or the stroke of her key) lends gravity to anything it touches⊠This collection is for wiseasses and weirdos, a cathedral of strange sentences... built upon the singular experience of being a human being. It contains only sharp observations and a constant juggling between beauty and decay, moments stretched and skewed like leaded glassâŠPond sparkles with witty one-linersâŠ[a] gorgeous book.â âLos Angeles Review of Books
"[T]his Woolfian novella will challenge all your ideas of narrative. Dreamlike fragments of a life drift in and out of frame, with startling prose that will make your usual perspective feel like sleepwalking." âElle
âBennettâs proseâardent, addictively obsessive-compulsive, a little feralâis from another galaxy, or maybe another century. Her delight in nature and gardening can be kookily romanticâŠand yet one could also imagine her taking an improbably cheerful seat among the modernistsâŠA man alone is a visionary; a woman alone is a witchâor worse, Bridget Jones. But Bennett spins something entirely different from her separateness, a kind of philosophy of being in the world as a writer both refreshing and hard-won." âVogue
âInnovative, beguilingâŠmeditativeâŠa fresh new voice from seemingly out of nowhereâŠReading Bennettâs book of loosely linked stories is a lovely retreat from the cacophony of contemporary lifeâŠwryly intelligentâŠquirkyâŠ[and] brightly original.â âLos Angeles Times
â[A] smart, funny, elliptical debutâŠReminiscent of Joyce and Beckett in its unmistakably Irish blend of earthy wit and existential unease. Yet Bennett does much more than emulate literary forebears. Pond expressed her unique sensibility in deceptively simply, delightfully unsettled prose. Weâll be hearing more from this formidably gifted young writer.â âThe Boston Globe
"[Pond] contains no story, no action and...one describable character and is defined as much by these absences as by the material that remains. Whatâs left on the page are the gleanings of a âmind in motion,â to borrow Ms. Bennettâs phraseâreflections on everyday objects, philosophical digressions, daydreams and stirred-up memories and associations... The book is reminiscent of a country diary, with entries that dwell on the narratorâs breakfast routine or her vegetable garden...Hers is a mind in attentive communion with itself, building baroque and beautiful cloud castles of thought to distract from the storms of the real." âWall Street Journal
âAn elegant and intoxicating debut novelâŠrich with strange, sensuous and exhilarating moods and texturesâŠwe are captivated by the narratorâs sharply illuminated interior reality and her lyrical depictions of the nature about her. Boldly defying convention, Pond is an exceptional debut with beautiful hidden depths.â âMinneapolis Star-Tribune
âA fascinating and utterly immersive reading experience that speaks volumes about the authorâs creative process and delivers insights in droves...compulsively readable and wackyâŠ[Bennett has] diffused our often confusing and chaotic world into something more manageable, yet all the while making itty-bitty molehills into mountains.â âSan Francisco Chronicle
â[A] cool, curious dive into a world of minutiae⊠intense, and often wickedly funny.â âChristian Science Monitor
âImmediately, the prose in Claire-Louise Bennettâs Pond feels new but deeply familiar â like the voice in your head but dialed just to the left. You are dropped into the book without your wits about you, and you may not totally recover them. Itâs exhilaratingâŠ...[Her] solitude offers the mental freedom to digress and to proclaim and to spend pages on beautifully ludicrous digressions. Within these digressions are details, and idiosyncratic, almost-confessional meditations on those details that would put Knausgaard to shame. This is a woman at her most comfortable, her most confidentâŠI think someone should award [Bennett] a great prize so that she can write us all something new.â âNYMag's The Cut
âMuddiness is not typically a positive description for a narrative, but this mud is sparkling, full of mica and minerals that glitter with color when the sunâs rays hit. Itâs through this glistening mud that Bennettâs readers get to mudlark, mucking about in prose that is alternatively deliberate and crisp, surrealistic and unknowable, to find real gems of observation and language⊠deeply satisfying and refreshingâŠBennett stomps all over writing-dude-in-nature territory without having to set a foot off her main characterâs property line.â âNew Republic
"Sharp and wittyâŠwonderfully discursiveâŠPond is maybe best understood as an embrace of all that wriggles in the dirt, and an experiment in uncovering that engrossing underworld beneath our more refined and constructed selves through the act of writing. BennettâŠwrites through the dramatic into something deeper, and the result is a reverie of âfervid primary visions,â the dredging of a riverine mind.â âThe Millions
"A phenomenal combination of hilarity and stillness with a weird undercurrent of menace that never quite rises to the surface but always leaves you slightly uneasy even as you are smiling about something brilliant the writer has managed to capture in the short space of a few pages.â âThe Awl
âImpressive indeed.â âVol 1 Brooklyn
âReminiscent of Norwegian writer Karl KnausgĂ„rd as much as it is Thoreau and Zadie Smith.â âRefinery29
"Compelling [and] innovative âŠBennettâs unique portrait of a persona emerges with an intensity and vision not often seen, or felt, in a debut.â âPoets & Writers
âPond, in its quirky structure and language, calls to mind the Irish fathers of literary modernism Joyce and Beckett. But then it also echoes Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Carroll's Alice, Thoreau's Walden and, more contemporarily, Strout's Olive Kitteridge, as well as anything by Nicholson BakerâŠBennett's narrator is a funny, self-deprecating, observant, opinionated, earthy woman whose mind grasps every detailed string of her rural life and gives it a pull to reveal her curiosity and contented solitudeâŠWhat a treasure, this woman!â âShelf Awareness
âBeautiful and brief.â âBrooklyn Magazine
âIreland is never mentioned outright in Claire-Louise Bennett's debut, but it is undeniably there ⊠even if just in the extraordinary language constructing every sentence⊠With a rich Irish literary tradition marked by behemoths like W.B. Yeats and James Joyce, there are many books one can pick up to prepare for a trip to Ireland. However, Bennett represents the modern writer who is left to carry on such a mantel; she will not disappoint.â âThe Week, âWhat to Read Based on Where Youâre Traveling this Summerâ
â[Pond is] packed with vivid imagery of a quiet life, and deep reflections from an unquiet mind. Itâs excellent, itâs ravishing, itâll win a ton of awards, itâll show up on everyoneâs Best of 2016 listsâŠâŠbravely original.â --Fiction Advocate
âA formally inventive work that slips past traditional storytelling to focus on impression as it chronicles the interior life of a single, unnamed woman dwelling on Irelandâs coast.â -Library Journal
"Mysteriously but wryly told...it is unlike anything else; its 20 stories portray the things we take for granted as being important, vital and worthy of us paying much closer attention." âNational Post
"Innovative and elegant...In her celebration of minutiae, Bennett recreates the experience of a believable, uniquely captivating persona. Pond deserves to be discovered and dived into, so thoroughly does Bennett submerge readers into her meticulously dazzling world.â âBooklist (starred)
"Captivating...Bennett has achieved something strange, unique, and undeniably wonderful." âPublisher's Weekly (starred)
"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." âThe Guardian
âA beautiful, lasting book that privileges modes of human experience that are so often undervalued, if they are acknowledged at all: neither formative encounters nor outward achievement, but rather the workings of a roving, inquisitive mind, open and receptive to all.â âLiterary Review (London)
â[An] artful collection of shut-in soliloquiesâŠstriking.â -The Telegraph, âWhat to Read in 2015â
âElegantly inventive.â âFinancial Times
âA wild, rewardingly ecstatic ride.â âThe Globe and Mail
âElegant and funny and seems to find a whole new space in the form.â âEimear McBride, TLS, âBooks of the Yearâ
âA touch of William Gaddis. A touch of Lydia Davis. A touch of Samuel Beckett. A touch of Edna O'Brien. And yet Claire-Louise Bennett's POND feels entirely unique. Quiet and luxurious all at once, this will be one of the most sensational debuts of the year.â âColum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin
"Claire-Louise Bennett sets the conventions of literary fiction ablaze in this ferociously intelligent and funny debut. Don't be fooled by Pond's small size. It contains multitudes." âJenny Offill, author of Department of Speculation
"Pond is brilliant â sharp and absorbing, compassionate and funny â and Claire-Louise Bennett is a deeply original writer with talent to spare. I can't stop thinking about this book."
âMolly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
"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 Beatlebone and City of Bohane
âIâd heard more good whispers about Pond than almost any other debut this year. . . . These stories are intelligent and funny, innovative and provocative, and itâs impossible to read them without thinking that here is a writer who has only just begun to show what she can do.â âEimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing
âExtraordinary . . . profoundly original though not eccentric, sharp and tender, funny and deeply engaging. A very new sort of writing . . . 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.â âSara Maitland, author of A Book of Silence
âWielding a wry but implacable logic, Claire-Louise Bennett dives under the surface of âordinaryâ experiences and things to reveal their supreme and giddy illogic. Like . . . Lydia Davis . . . she writes an impeccable affectless prose that almost magically arrives at something extraordinary.â âChris Kraus, author of I Love Dick
âClaire-Louise Bennett is a major writer to be discovered and treasured.â âDeborah Levy, author of Swimming Home
Login|Complaints|Blog|Games|Digital Media|Souls|Obituary|Contact Us|FAQ
CAN'T FIND WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR? CLICK HERE!!! X
You must be logged in to add to WishlistX
This item is in your Wish ListX
This item is in your CollectionPond
X
This Item is in Your InventoryPond
X
You must be logged in to review the productsX
X
X
Add Pond, , Pond to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
X
Add Pond, , Pond to your collection on WonderClub |