Bookshelf: Pond

Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett

A good line or two:

[This is actually a whole chapter in its entirety called "Willful Thinking"]

Pads upstairs, scrapples about beneath ottoman, locates green flip-flop. Straightens, eyes bed. Thinks, hmmmm, stylish. Foxford blanket, textured curtains, suave bolster, a bit of broderie anglaise and so on. Then: have I had breakfast? Swiftly glances over the banister. Sees empty bowl and smeared spoon at the edge of the desk. Next to a bottle of Hawaiian Tropic. Factor 15. Thinks,

perhaps that was from another day.

(p 51, line break intentional as in the book)

Got me thinking about:

What slaves we are to traditional storytelling and how refreshing it was to read something that threw that shit to the wind. This is a novel, but not really. There's essentially no plot and Bennett zooms you in so close to the narrator's life and perspective, throws you in with zero context directly into the narrator's brain and it's SO FUCKING CONFUSING at first. But once you surrender, once you accept that you will not be given such pedestrian, hum-drum details that you think are so necessary like where/when/how/why then oh my god, what a ride. What a ride!

How some writers have such an uncanny ability to walk you through the perhaps insane, certainly illogical, progressions of someone else's mind in such minute detail. How they can make you relate to anybody. Virginia Woolf and Miranda July came to mind a bunch while reading.

Consumed:

Before bed, a little each night. Slowly. It's one of the only books I've read in recent memory where I wanted to truly savor it, make it last.