I am not sure what to think of this book. Pond reads like an undated cut-and-paste diary. Or maybe it is simply the journal of a wandering mind. Scenes from the past overlap scenes in the present. All the happenings, past and present, are narrated by an unnamed woman who is renting a cottage in a small village on the Irish coast.
There is a pond.
And, just like you would dip your toe into that pond or other body of water to test it, perhaps this book is best dipped into as well. One-page observations mix with longer chapters with titles such as "Morning, Noon & Night", "Finishing Touch", and "A Little Before Seven".
It is very mysterious. In one chapter, author Claire-Louise Bennett has her narrator reporting on the activities preparing for the Big Day but never really explains what the Big Day is and the narrator doesn't attend the event anyway so I guess it doesn't matter.
I found myself wondering: are these stories from the author's experience? What was her writing process? Did she just document daily happenings and create her narrator to share them with the reader? Did the author wander from room to room recording her random thoughts during the day and then spend her evenings transcribing them?
Is the book the result of notebooks filled with observations of her daily life — from filling a bowl with fruit and setting it on a stone window sill to looking at the empty cereal bowl on the kitchen table and wondering if it was from today's breakfast or yesterday's? (I could so identify with that one!)
This book certainly won't appeal to some. In fact, it might be maddening if you like a linear timeline and hate wild tangents.
For example, in the chapter "The Deepest Sea" the narrator begins musing about the blue-black ink in her fountain pen and wonders why the green ink in the cartridge she has just inserted is not appearing on the page. This followed by a brief history of the fountain pen. Then she goes on to tell where she found the green ink cartridge — in the bottom of a shopping bag. Also discovered is a Letter — a letter she thought was in a clutch purse in her closet but all this time, since she moved into the cottage anyway, it has been in the bottom of the shopping bag. With the cartridge. And the Letter is one she hesitates to reread due to the heartbreaking nature of its contents.
In another chapter, she moves from contemplating the three knobs on her cooker/oven to reflecting on a book she just read about the last woman on earth and that in one scene the woman sits at the table and counts her matches because once the matches are gone, the light will be gone, and that leads the narrator to imagine how this woman might have died and thought it quite clever of the author not to tell but to leave it to the reader to determine how she might die, this being the end of the world and all, and then it's back to the cooker and the narrator's search for replacement knobs as there is now only one knob left that isn't broken and she has to use that one to control the two top burners and the oven and what will happen when this last knob is broken and useless.
You can see how this goes.
You will either like this meandering or you will be totally put off. I usually prefer a straightforward narration, but I also like to read about the details (real or imagined) that make up someone's day and there are plenty of those included. And anyway, I have long thought I would do just fine living by myself in a cottage and perhaps I too would spend my days recording my random thoughts and memories.
A compelling read, but like I said, very mysterious.
