Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett

The things that hold life in place have been lifted off and put away. Uprooted by circumstance from city to deep countryside, a woman lives in temporary limbo, visited by memories of all she’s left behind. The most insistent are those of Xavier, who has always been certain he knows her better than anyone, better than she knows herself. Xavier, whom she still loves but no longer desires, a displacement he has been unable to accept. An unexpected letter from an old acquaintance brings back a torrent of others she’s loved or wanted. Each has been a match and a mismatch, a liberation and a threat to her very sense of self. The ephemera left by their passage – a spilled coffee, an unwanted bouquet, a mind-blowing kiss – make up a cabinet of curiosity she inventories, trying to divine the essence of intimacy. What does it mean to connect with another person? What impels us to touch someone, to be touched by them, to stay in touch? How do we let them go? In yet another tour de force of fiction, Claire-Louise Bennett explores the mystery of how people come into and go out of our lives, leaving us forever in their grasp.

‘Bennett writes like no one elseShe is a rare talent.’
— Karl Ove Knausgaard

‘Claire-Louise Bennett sets the conventions of literary fiction ablaze in this ferociously intelligent and funny debut. Don’t be fooled by Pond’s small size. It contains multitudes.’
— Jenny Offill, author of Weather (praise for Pond)

‘This is an extraordinary collection of short stories – profoundly original though not eccentric, sharp and tender, funny and deeply engaging. A very new sort of writing, Bennett pushes the boundaries of the short story out into new territory: part prose fiction, part stream of consciousness, often truly poetry and always an acute, satisfying, delicate, honest meditation on both the joys and frustrations of a life fully lived in solitude. Take it slowly, because it is worth it, and be impressed and joyful.’
— Sara Maitland, author of A Book of Silence (praise for Pond)

‘I’d heard more good whispers about Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett than almost any other debut this year so, by the time I read it, expectations were high and – as it turned out – not disappointed. These stories are intelligent and funny, innovative and provocative, and it’s impossible to read them without thinking that here is a writer who has only just begun to show what she can do.’
— Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (praise for Pond)

‘Bennett’s language is an ornate and long-winded riposte to all those pared-back minimalists, and I love it.’
 — Jon McGregor, Guardian (praise for Pond)

Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and currently lives in Ireland. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and her debut book, Pond, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Her second book, Checkout 19, was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2021 and was part of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2022 Selection. Claire-Louise’s fiction and essays have appeared in a number of publications including The White Review, Stinging Fly, frieze, Harper’s Magazine and the New Yorker. Big Kiss, Bye-Bye is her third work of fiction.