There is a sense of restlessness in the work of Claire-Louise Bennett, a rhythmic looping feedback that the nameless female narrators of short story collection Pond (2015) and novel Checkout 19 (2021) share as they look to the world around them—a solitary cottage in the countryside, a grocery store checkout register—and then back to themselves, their minds quick, always thinking. It’s a quality that Bennett possesses herself and on a call from her home in the west of Ireland, she reflects on everything from rereading the work of Samuel Beckett and her love of literature in translation to the strange experience of sorting through two decades’ worth of her own notebooks.

Rhian Sasseen: In both Pond and Checkout 19, you write in a very distinctive register, one that feels almost ca...