What makes the book unique is the voice in which those moments are described-unfolding in a bird-like language that feels closer to thought than public address. The woman eats fruit, tries to replace a broken dial on her Salton mini oven, and wonders if the cows in a nearby field believe she is Jesus. In the most literal sense, the twenty stories that make up Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut, Pond, record a series of moments in the life of an English woman living alone on the west coast of Ireland. All of a sudden it is things, rather than other people, that seem to direct your thoughts. When you ’ re no longer required to eat dinner at a particular time, or to close the bathroom door to shower, your relationship to the space around you changes. Strange things happen when you live alone.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |