Pond (Bennett)

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Pond...then take off on your own:

1. As reader, how well do you feel you know the narrator of Pond. She is never named, nor does any other voice describe her to us except for the final chapter. What do we learn about her? Choose any, or all, of the book's 20 chapters and talk about what each tells us about her.

2.  What is the narrator doing in her cottage by the sea? She talks about her lack of ambition and says that "real events don't make much difference to me." Is she hiding? Escaping? If so, from what? Is she seeking solace in solitude (.except that she interacts with others and his wi-fi)?

3. Think about the first story's little girl who climbs over a wall into a garden and falls asleep, suggesting an Alice in Wonderland quality to the stories. What are the instances in which the narrator finds enchantment in the smallest or most basic and ordinary things.

4. The stories are infused with a sense of loss, personal and professional. How does she frame those experiences, "the essential brutality of love," and what we come to learn about the various episodes in her life and how they affect her?

5. The narrator tells us that childhood is when one should...

develop the facility to really notice things so that, over time, and with enough practice, one ...can experience the enriching joy of moving about in deep and direct accordance with things." What does she mean to live in "deep accordance with things?

Is it possible to engage in the practice of "noticing things" in adulthood, or in adulthood do schuedels, duties, and egos take over our lives?

6. What is the narrator's relationship with men and sex. Consider, for instance, her attitude toward rape in the story titled, "Morning 1908."

7. Where do you find humor in the book? What about "Oh, Tomato Puree" or "Stir-Fry"?

8. In "Control Knobs" the narator wonders what it would feel like to be the last woman alive. Referring to a such character in a novel, the narrator claims she would like "to be undone in just the way she is being undone." What does she mean?

9. What are some of the comparisons you see with Thoreau's Walden Pond, which Bennett might be nodding to in her book's title?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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