Robert Lukens

Yeah, it's a very recent read for me.

It's Pond by Claire Louise Bennett.

And it was one of those books that everywhere I turned, someone was recommending this book to me.

And so I picked it up and I don't know anything about Claire Louise Bennett.

And I've purposely kept myself in the dark since reading it because this is

such a mysterious book it is such a unique and strange voice and again i suppose a little like i was talking about with bride's head it's this amazing integration of different styles the prose is an absolute whirlwind in some ways it's a novel about language it's about the limitations of language to describe human experience the words just tumble out of this main character and

And sometimes it's just those little sneaks into the reality of what's happening in this story.

We don't have that direct access to the story here.

There's just this maelstrom of ideas and words tumbling on top of it.

And you just get little cracks.

The curtain just is revealed now and again.

And we see the reality of this strange situation of this main character who's hermited themselves in this crumbling cottage.

It is a novel about friendship, and I think it's a novel about...

The island that these boys exist in, in some ways, is a sort of empty world.

These people are being endlessly drawn into the past, to their events growing up and the tragedies that befall them then and to the tragedies that Tom bore witness to and the repercussions of that.

To me, the island that's depicted sort of the most future leaning point of this story is one that doesn't really exist.

That's the one part to me that I didn't get a sense of that place.

And I think that's deliberate.

And I think that's because these characters can't exist in that place yet because they're forever attached to these events of the past.

Carl and Baz are our two main protagonists, as I see it.