Synopsis "Lake of Urine: A Love Story (in English)"
"Lake of Urine is a jeu d'esprit, best enjoyed on its own deranged terms. And it is genuinely funny, with nuggets of surreal whimsy on almost every page." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT"Mesmerising... practically sublime." IRISH TIMES"Such a talent for world building...an abundance of funny, bizarre, imaginative touches." HERALD SCOTLAND"Absolutely savage...absurdly funny...truly original." Anne Cunningham of the SUNDAY INDEPENDENTOnce upon a time that doesn't make a blind bit of sense, in a place that seems awfully familiar but definitely doesn't exist, Willem Seiler's obsession with measuring his world--with wrapping it up in his beloved string to keep the madness out--wreaks havoc on the Wakeling family. Noranbole Wakeling, living in the scrub and toil of the pantry and in the shadow of her much wooed and cosseted sister, is worshipped by the madman Seiler but overlooked by everyone else. As lives are lost to Seiler's vanity, she spots her chance to break free of the fetters that tie her to Tiny Village, and bolts. But some cords are never really cut. In her absence, the unravelling of the world she has escaped is complete, and another madness--her mother's--reaches out to entangle her newfound Big City freedom. The unpicked quilt-work of a life in ruins threatens to ruin her own, and it will be up to Noranbole to stitch it all together.Dark and funny in equal measure, LAKE OF URINE is a sui generis romp through every fairy-tale convention and literary trope you can think of, including the wicked stepmother, the fairy godmother, Pinocchio, an enchanted penis, the goose that laid the golden egg, binary code, marmalade art and alcoholic meat snacks you can drink. It is also a merciless takedown of self and self-importance, satirizing a society that exalts the inane, drowns out the sane and eschews the divine for the profane, and a lament for the dreadful weight of our own origins, for the heartbreaking impossibility of absolute reinvention, and the heartening tug of the ties that bind us."A weird and unique gem--hilarious and eerie and oddly heartfelt, full of images and bits of language that will lodge permanently in your head." DAN CHAON, author of Ill Will"Guillermo Stitch's LAKE OF URINE reads like something Flann O'Brien might have written if he'd just allowed himself to go really wild." CHRISTIAN TeBORDO, author of Ghost Engine"Buckle up: Guillermo Stitch's LAKE OF URINE is a formally inventive and exhilarating romp, an absurdist marriage plot with notes of Bohumil Hrabal and a novel's heft of singularity. Come for the exuberant prose; stay for the bawdy turns and twists, and be rewarded with laughter. This colorful, original tale will not disappoint." SARA LIPPMANN, author of Doll Palace"Enchantingly absurd and sumptuously rendered, Lake of Urine is a raucous, brazen romp through a beguilingly fantastic world. Guillermo Stitch has concocted a banquet for the senses, with surprises to savor on every page." MATTHEW VOLLMER, author of Permanent Exhibit"Brilliant tragicomedy...every character is an eccentric blend of caricature and nuance...takes the absurdist satire to its logical extreme." THE MANTLE"Whatever our own normative intuitions as readers regarding what fiction should or shouldn't be, it is hard, even after a few pages, not to surrender to Stitch's unflinching audacity, which is everywhere on display." TOTALLY DUBLIN"Fans of Donald Barthelme's most playful prosody, or the breakneck humor of A Confederacy of Dunces, will have to remind themselves to breathe in between those first 18 pages. (If isolated, 'Seiler' would be my favorite short story of the last decade.) 2020 may not see a wilder book." HEAVY FEATHER REVIEW"There's skilful alchemy at play here.... an unconventional and iconoclastic novel." SPLICE"Like something out of a dream, familiar and unsettling, a convincing achievement on par with the recognizable nowhere-ness of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman." ARTS FUSE
