It is a political commentary on girlhood, womanhood and writing and how these experiences intersect with class, money, freedom and patriarchy, but it also manages to be deeply moving and utterly absorbing at the same time. The effect is an unusual impression of simultaneous austerity and festivity, a little like Bennett’s writing itself, which seems to blend a clean modernist style with a luxurious ornateness.Ĭheckout 19 tells the story of one woman’s journey to becoming a writer, revisiting defining moments in her life, from early romantic fantasies to the kind of books that influenced her to traumatic experiences and the struggle for her own personal freedom in the world. She is dressed in a vibrant, multicoloured blouse, buttoned to the throat, a large red necklace resting on top of it, her dark hair pulled back neatly from her face. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that something really kicked in during that period of time,” she says in her gentle west English accent over coffee and scones in her adopted home town of Galway, where she has lived for 20 years. “I’ve been writing the last six, seven, eight years, but badly, pretty badly, as far as I’m concerned.” Lockdown liberated something in her writing. But there was a point when she wasn’t sure whether she would write another book at all. Six years later, she has returned with her debut novel, Checkout 19, an extraordinary affirmation of her writing talent. Bennett was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016 and lauded by writers like Deborah Levy, Karl Ove Knausgaard and Eimear McBride. First published by the Stinging Fly in Ireland, Pond was later picked up by Fitzcarraldo Editions and by Riverhead, both with reputations for publishing literary work of exceptional quality. Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut collection of stories, Pond, published in 2015, announced the arrival of a striking new voice.

Pond by claire louise bennett