Behind the amorphous shapes on the cover lies an extraordinary book of short stories, which could alternatively have been entitled “Home”. Unlike most short story collections, which dart hither and yon, Pond gains its strength by staying put and examining one psyche, the narrator’s, from a variety of angles. Each story is a facet of the daily life of a single woman who has moved to a coastal cottage. She’s a bit of an isolationist, attached to her own way of doing things and becoming ever more connected with the cottage in which she lives. Significantly, there are no continuing characters from one story to the next, and Bennett makes some interesting shifts in focus: the people our narrator interacts with are vague and blurred, but she is sharply specific about her preferences and the objects littering her domain. Rather than limiting the stories Bennett can tell, the constraints result in a compelling and illuminating portrait of her central character.
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