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Fish Out of Water
Claire-Louise Bennett explores the surreal portraiture of Dorothea Tanning. A chance encounter with an exhibition of Tanning’s works in Madrid reawakens a kinship between the surrealist artist and the author. Falling in and out of the artist’s life and paintings, she recollects the rebellious internal worlds and nascent creativity that defined both their childhoods.
44 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
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About the author
Claire-Louise Bennett
20 books758 followersClaire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton, before moving to Ireland where she worked in and studied theatre for several years. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and went on to complete her debut book, Pond, which was published by The Stinging Fly (Ireland) and Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) in 2015, and by Riverhead (US) in 2016. Pond was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016.
Her second novel, Checkout 19, was published in 2021 and was selected as one of the ten best books of 2022 by the New York Times.
Her second novel, Checkout 19, was published in 2021 and was selected as one of the ten best books of 2022 by the New York Times.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 28, 2020
Quick read. The story often feels like a lens going in and out of focus – things will seem hazy and you’ll struggle to get a sense of what’s happening. Just when you think it’s all coming into focus, you’ll get a new tangent that throws you back into full speculation. All of this is to say: don’t be discouraged. The ending is EXCELLENT.
March 9, 2022
And the images of ‘Checkout 19’ come into view as you’re immersed in surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning’s works. Masterful, surreal but cemented in the real.
October 12, 2021
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/fi...
...Inside you wild fantasies flickered, stoking your feverish imagination with dramatic encounters and secret longings, which of course had nothing whatsoever to do with the tedious domestic life going on around you…
There was feeling of familiarity within these pages as if I had read them somewhere before, perhaps now being used as a retread of sorts, but then I asked myself how could they be, what isn’t a retread anyway, and how often have I revisited a place or a face or a situation I hadn’t yet finished mining.
...The fact that they thought they could bully us annoyed us much more than the fact that they did...
I can imagine girl bullies are just as mean and thoughtless as boy bullies. We certainly witnessed and at times also experienced our share of them, and mostly in high school during our teenage years. I know being a bully, male or female, definitely has something to do with revealing a lack of intelligence, grace especially, and wanting so badly to be bigger and better than others, especially those we cannot understand. And those of us, by no fault of our own, who were slow to develop breasts, or hair around our genitals, or muscles even were left to feel ostracized, left out, and on our own ashamed for not measuring up to those particularly nasty girls with their big tits or the naked Neanderthals with their swinging dicks.
...I came to understand very quickly that you live in a world of your own making, fired by both the intellect and intuition, the rational and the unknown, the quotidian and the marvellous…
How wonderful to be in the midst of this, the creative act, in becoming god, and naming what is and what is to be. Nothing like it really. And when one comes into contact with this truth, and it becomes the basis for all that you do, the feeling of power is immensely freeing and unleashes a torrent of ideas, our imagination spurring on the further production of a bevy of dreams and oscillations that grind and gore in order for more body and blood and the ultimate communion.
...it was your breasts , bare and hard, that really got to me because I saw right away that they were identical to mine and I’d never thought that before about a pair of breasts in any picture I’ve ever seen and looking at them my own breasts felt extraordinarily present and discerning, as if in fact they were eyes…
The alliance Claire-Louise felt with Dorothea Tanner because their breasts were exactly alike was sadly charming. Along with Bennett’s tales of teenage menstruation in other works, her small breasts carries with them a vulnerability not usually found or associated in most literary works of art. We generally avoid what is less about ourselves and prefer highlighting our more socially acceptable traits. But Tanner and Bennett do not conform to these societal givens. They are both more powerful than that. And by hook or by crook, even stranger yet. Which is a good thing and separates the wheat from the chaff. The winnowing necessary to make art stick.
...Yes, we think if you write poems or make art and that sort of thing it probably helps if you have the capacity to become unreservedly absorbed in the universe…
Claire-Louise Bennett has become my favorite writer for a very good reason. Not only can she write well, she, in many ways, is like-minded, a fellow traveler, a seeker, a reader of books of which many she mentions I have read and still she offers more for me to discover. Dorothea Tanning is one of them. Nell Dunn another. And there are additional names I have yet to add to my queue. Thrilling developments to say the least. Reading these women was a welcome relief after just finishing off a book by an unknown and pretentious Oglala Lakota author who attempted to rewrite the history of Crazy Horse and Valentine McGillycuddy. His poor writing was nothing but a curse upon my soul. I needed Bennett to once again offer comfort and a good cleansing through her written words. And she did just that.
... We were writing about how it all began...she burns and blazes...leaps into the basket and the whole thing goes up in flames...We are looking back as if we know something now we did not know then when very obviously that is not the case...
So, as familiar to me as this text seemed to be, I do understand how important it is to repeat and remind and to remember. Bennett’s latest book Checkout 19 certainly came from this Fish Out of Water, was born of it, and remains now a remnant of that period when Claire-Louise became quite intimate with Dorothea Tanning, Edna O’Brien, Nell Dunn, Ann Quin, and a host of other fascinating and important women that she could relate to and feel a sense of belonging otherwise absent in her daily life. Their cumulative inspiration is without a doubt remarkable. And Bennett does it again, making art, and ultimately making history in spite of it.
...Inside you wild fantasies flickered, stoking your feverish imagination with dramatic encounters and secret longings, which of course had nothing whatsoever to do with the tedious domestic life going on around you…
There was feeling of familiarity within these pages as if I had read them somewhere before, perhaps now being used as a retread of sorts, but then I asked myself how could they be, what isn’t a retread anyway, and how often have I revisited a place or a face or a situation I hadn’t yet finished mining.
...The fact that they thought they could bully us annoyed us much more than the fact that they did...
I can imagine girl bullies are just as mean and thoughtless as boy bullies. We certainly witnessed and at times also experienced our share of them, and mostly in high school during our teenage years. I know being a bully, male or female, definitely has something to do with revealing a lack of intelligence, grace especially, and wanting so badly to be bigger and better than others, especially those we cannot understand. And those of us, by no fault of our own, who were slow to develop breasts, or hair around our genitals, or muscles even were left to feel ostracized, left out, and on our own ashamed for not measuring up to those particularly nasty girls with their big tits or the naked Neanderthals with their swinging dicks.
...I came to understand very quickly that you live in a world of your own making, fired by both the intellect and intuition, the rational and the unknown, the quotidian and the marvellous…
How wonderful to be in the midst of this, the creative act, in becoming god, and naming what is and what is to be. Nothing like it really. And when one comes into contact with this truth, and it becomes the basis for all that you do, the feeling of power is immensely freeing and unleashes a torrent of ideas, our imagination spurring on the further production of a bevy of dreams and oscillations that grind and gore in order for more body and blood and the ultimate communion.
...it was your breasts , bare and hard, that really got to me because I saw right away that they were identical to mine and I’d never thought that before about a pair of breasts in any picture I’ve ever seen and looking at them my own breasts felt extraordinarily present and discerning, as if in fact they were eyes…
The alliance Claire-Louise felt with Dorothea Tanner because their breasts were exactly alike was sadly charming. Along with Bennett’s tales of teenage menstruation in other works, her small breasts carries with them a vulnerability not usually found or associated in most literary works of art. We generally avoid what is less about ourselves and prefer highlighting our more socially acceptable traits. But Tanner and Bennett do not conform to these societal givens. They are both more powerful than that. And by hook or by crook, even stranger yet. Which is a good thing and separates the wheat from the chaff. The winnowing necessary to make art stick.
...Yes, we think if you write poems or make art and that sort of thing it probably helps if you have the capacity to become unreservedly absorbed in the universe…
Claire-Louise Bennett has become my favorite writer for a very good reason. Not only can she write well, she, in many ways, is like-minded, a fellow traveler, a seeker, a reader of books of which many she mentions I have read and still she offers more for me to discover. Dorothea Tanning is one of them. Nell Dunn another. And there are additional names I have yet to add to my queue. Thrilling developments to say the least. Reading these women was a welcome relief after just finishing off a book by an unknown and pretentious Oglala Lakota author who attempted to rewrite the history of Crazy Horse and Valentine McGillycuddy. His poor writing was nothing but a curse upon my soul. I needed Bennett to once again offer comfort and a good cleansing through her written words. And she did just that.
... We were writing about how it all began...she burns and blazes...leaps into the basket and the whole thing goes up in flames...We are looking back as if we know something now we did not know then when very obviously that is not the case...
So, as familiar to me as this text seemed to be, I do understand how important it is to repeat and remind and to remember. Bennett’s latest book Checkout 19 certainly came from this Fish Out of Water, was born of it, and remains now a remnant of that period when Claire-Louise became quite intimate with Dorothea Tanning, Edna O’Brien, Nell Dunn, Ann Quin, and a host of other fascinating and important women that she could relate to and feel a sense of belonging otherwise absent in her daily life. Their cumulative inspiration is without a doubt remarkable. And Bennett does it again, making art, and ultimately making history in spite of it.
December 24, 2022
‚you remind me of me‘
January 2, 2025
I'm not long for this world. That's something we grew accustomed to hearing our grandmother avow while waiting for instance for the kettle to boil. The dull infinite rumbling sound of water shuddering to vapour heaven knows can all of a sudden bring on such celestial yearnings.
a short story... not a story, more an archipelago of vignettes, reflecting the life and work of artist Dorothea Tanning. autofiction interleaved with surrealism wrapped in magic realism.
and an introduction to an intriguing artist of whom i was completely unaware. (a welcome reminder that i know practically nothing about practically everything.)
a note on the type: a Garamond of some ilk, but with some weirdly off-balanced letters — the g's middle shelf is rather thicker than it wants to be, and kerning appears to be AWOL, in basic pairs like Yo Ve Ta...
a short story... not a story, more an archipelago of vignettes, reflecting the life and work of artist Dorothea Tanning. autofiction interleaved with surrealism wrapped in magic realism.
and an introduction to an intriguing artist of whom i was completely unaware. (a welcome reminder that i know practically nothing about practically everything.)
a note on the type: a Garamond of some ilk, but with some weirdly off-balanced letters — the g's middle shelf is rather thicker than it wants to be, and kerning appears to be AWOL, in basic pairs like Yo Ve Ta...
March 25, 2024
Read aloud as a group while doing laps of the park. Breathless and at times overlapping with the conversations of other groups of walkers. felt appropriate and inappropriate. Said breasts a lot to the workshop leader and then he said Claire-Louise Bennett and I are friends. It was a great day.
June 21, 2025
An excellent little novella, inspired by the work of Dorothea Tanning (specifically her Self Portrait). Suitable surreal/modernist and striking in style, it’s a great piece of writing.
January 5, 2026
So short, extremely poetic. You’re not sure what it’s about until everything comes colliding. I love it.
August 27, 2022
“But when a woman’s breasts look identical to your own that took so long to come you find you can’t do otherwise than gladly trust her with your life.”
Much of this also featured in Checkout 19, but god bless C-L B for relating to Dorothea Tanning through the similarities in their boobs.
Much of this also featured in Checkout 19, but god bless C-L B for relating to Dorothea Tanning through the similarities in their boobs.
January 25, 2025
“There was no one for us to talk to. No one. We were adrift and out of place and there was no one here we could talk to. We had to pretend so many things.” In Fish Out Of Water, Claire-Louise Bennett has written a gorgeously evocative short story, inspired by Dorothea Tanning’s 1944 ‘Self-Portrait’; haunting, with an unstable subjectivity and quietly reflective preoccupation with writing and creating art. As ever, Bennett’s prose is singing and magnetic. Thank you to Juxta Press for sending me these books – they are so beautifully assembled and written, a joy and a brief blessing to read!
July 22, 2020
Claire-Louise Bennett taking inspiration from Dorothea Tanning's self-portraits, what more could you ask for? A beautiful book on intimacy, the power of fantasy, and life.
December 5, 2020
Love how innovative this approach to fiction writing is. This novella demonstrates the continued relevance and joy of women surrealists.
March 10, 2025
We sound as if we know and we do not know.
October 2, 2025
Not really my kind of thing.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews