Have you ever thought about leaving everything? To think of moving to the edge of a pond, with only a goat and the murmur of a stream as companions… Claire-Louise Bennett takes you with her. 
- Release date France: 2018
- publisher: L'Olivier
- 224 pages
- Large format price: 19,50 € | Price pocket version: 6,50 €
For this first literary review, let's take a gentle look at a light and contemplative novel, which will appeal to nature lovers and budding philosophers alike. The Pond is the ethereal story of a narrator of whom we know almost nothing, who left on a whim in the Irish countryside, to settle there after abandoning her studies.
From there starts a story that narrates a sequence of events to the rhythm of the life of this new "hermit" of the countryside. The simple words and the peaceful setting take the reader into a contemplative fable that invites daydreaming. It's almost like you're at the edge of the pond next to him.
"A leaf entered through the window came to rest directly on the water between my knees while sitting in the bathtub I looked outside. »
Our main character has no name or past. We only mention the thesis that she abandoned to go live alone. She seems to have no other purpose than to live there, lost in her isolated home. Far from everything, away from everyone. In the chapters of her diary she confides in the first person about her routines, her surprisingly non-monotonous life, her visitors and her observations. She observes a lot, all the time. Because it is in the minute details that lies the beauty of Claire-Louise Bennett's writing. It describes with finesse the progression of insects on a branch, the sound of the wind between the trunks or the peaceful calm before the storm. She is a Thoreau eager for wide open spaces, a Jean Hegland lost in the forest. It bewitches the reader and captivates him, capturing him in a bubble.
"I listened to a little beetle running the birth of my hair on my forehead. I listened to a spider cross the grass towards my blanket. I listened to the yo-yo of a couple of quarrelsome blue behind me. I listened to the ramier crumbling in the middle branches of an ivy-coated beech tree and starlings on the electric cables above, and the seagulls and swifts much higher. And each sound was a step by which I rose, and so it was possible for me to climb very high, to climb beyond the clouds, to a volatile exuberance. »
Like the calm and quiet scenes of life of a Kawabata, L'Étang invites a dreamy introspection. Claire-Louise Bennett brilliantly mixes several registers of language. The ensemble creates an original story in the tradition of authors who experience the symbiosis of being with nature. You have to dive into it to grasp the whole philosophy of the book, its essence, its symbolism.
