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Lake of Urine
Once 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 lives in the scrub and toil of the pantry, in the ashes of the cold hearth—which, come to think of it, also sounds pretty familiar...She lives, too, in the shadow of her much wooed and cosseted sister, worshipped by the madman Seiler but overlooked by everyone else.
And that, it turns out, is a good thing.
As lives are lost to Seiler's vanity, the inattention spares her. 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. 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. It will be up to Noranbole to stitch it all together, into something she can call true.
"Lake of Urine" might just provide the year's literary splash. Dark and funny in equal measure, it is a sui generis romp through every fairy tale convention and literary trope you can think of—the wicked stepmother, the fairy godmother, Pinnochio, an enchanted penis, the goose that laid the golden egg, binary code, marmalade art and alcoholic meat snacks you can drink. They're all in there.
It is also a merciless take down of self and self-importance, satirising a society that exalts the inane, drowns out the sane and eschews the divine for the profane. And it is 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.
Noranbole Wakeling lives in the scrub and toil of the pantry, in the ashes of the cold hearth—which, come to think of it, also sounds pretty familiar...She lives, too, in the shadow of her much wooed and cosseted sister, worshipped by the madman Seiler but overlooked by everyone else.
And that, it turns out, is a good thing.
As lives are lost to Seiler's vanity, the inattention spares her. 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. 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. It will be up to Noranbole to stitch it all together, into something she can call true.
"Lake of Urine" might just provide the year's literary splash. Dark and funny in equal measure, it is a sui generis romp through every fairy tale convention and literary trope you can think of—the wicked stepmother, the fairy godmother, Pinnochio, an enchanted penis, the goose that laid the golden egg, binary code, marmalade art and alcoholic meat snacks you can drink. They're all in there.
It is also a merciless take down of self and self-importance, satirising a society that exalts the inane, drowns out the sane and eschews the divine for the profane. And it is 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.
214 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2020
63 people are currently reading
1070 people want to read
About the author
Guillermo Stitch
20 books107 followersGuillermo Stitch is the author of the novella "Literature™", which won gold at the 2019 INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER (IPPY)Awards, and the novel, "Lake of Urine". He lives in Spain.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
September 25, 2020
This original work begins as a comedy of sophisticated, staged moments, which appear to be ill-planned mishaps misfiring with intriguing results. It is a distinct and satisfying form of entertainment. Stitch's novel, however, turns out, by and by, to be much more.
Simple concepts are infused with elaborate invention, complex scenarios are spun out for the sheer novelty of the method, archly described by Señor Stitch. His writing is constantly surprising, and the fecundity of his language deserves all the accolades. Sagging Meniscus publishes unconventional literature, and this fits in with their mystique.
At bottom, amid the multifarious themes tackled in this novel, a few stand-outs are: Domestic violence, tenderness, and family trial. It is cheekily old fashioned and postmodern at the same time. Also more substantial than its slim design would lead you to believe.
The author contemplates human relations with stark and unabashed honesty, sidelong, through the medium of parody, across a wide array of settings, all amply described, immersive, and brutally comic, the pages beset with gestures both lurid and poignant.
The high production quality and elegant design are enough to lure you toward the paperback version as opposed to the ebook, I wager, but the inherent mystery in the setting and the precise narration will likely stick with you.
Noranbole is one of our lenses onto this bizarre version of the world. At first depicted as the ideal feminine alongside Urine, who is seen as trouble and undesirable. Later development’s in the characters’ lives belie these simple categorizations.
The strange relationships to come are explicated through suggestive, experimental, playful dialogue, exquisitely wrought oddness, and bland but multifaceted observations, as imagery and commentary combine to construct an eerie depth of setting.
The mysterious lake, unplumbed, affords the narrator more opportunity to enact his string-based mania for measurement. This is our opening dose of comical, hyperbolic strangeness. More magical realism awaits, as characters discuss such precise aversions and troubles as occur at every juncture, hinting at the underlying mechanisms of their personas. Hapless wannabes, businessmen with quirky agendas, sports commentators with religious commitment all make appearances. All the while, the author is punning, funning, with boisterous improv, raptalk rhythm, rare vocab, as the wolves of his atmospheric suggestion wait in the margins. Some of these portrayals make use of skewed English and malapropisms, mutilating speech for comic effect, with exaggerated wordplay, charming with smarm, often putting things in an off-putting way, until the absurdity is ratcheted up, until miracles occur and are taken at face value. This is all underpinned with exotic and precise details.
Spattered with foreign phrases, colorful sideline characters the exact opposite of clichés, wacky names, impromptu branding, and multicultural spice take us to the midway point in the story, where bureaucratic corporate satire takes over. It is seen as an accumulation of its constituent people, their flaws compounding by virtue of organizing into a larger body. Improvised business jargon provides plentiful chuckles. I was reminded of the Strugatsky Bros. in Monday Begins on Saturday. The vicissitudes of working at an emporium are some of the most enjoyable parts of the novel. Wheedling, ingratiating blowhards and buffoons, corporate double-speak, overreacting caricatures and more, will stick in the memory. It is an extravaganza, with diverse inclusion of foodstuffs, a pleasure-filled romp to delight the senses ensues, utilizing a splendid variety of metafictional devices. The winner for best Pynchonian name in the book is Amerideath.
Some semantics, commentary, and perverse behavior are thrown in allow Stitch to play human follyball with these fictional lives. Meat patty flipping hobbyists? Why not? If that is not enough, with searing intelligence, he pulls off the multi-hundred word sentence. The on-the-nose humor is sustained until it begins to feel like Monty Python with a few steampunk stylings, chock full of morbidity and hilarious hijinks. From Big City to Small Town, we traverse Emma’s section of the novel to be confronted with something entirely different. The book employs a more traditional narrative here, with focus on drama and depth of character. He satirizes small town life as well as city life but through a new lens, displaying a knowledge of etiquette and social mores, through delusions and portmanteaus.
The peculiarities of Emma’s hubbies are anything but ordinary. They are repressed and representative archetypal characters, through which he explores the fears of parenting and marriage, the perils of home life, and familial petulance. These querulous, well-sculpted characters are fodder for his ravening wit, not bereft of poetry or poetic license, and often succumbing to literary tricksterism. Emma's creative childcare, the novel's depiction of parental obsolescence, woes, and power struggles, is on point, being a world unto itself. This departure from the absurdities of the satire to enlarge upon pastoral domestics are never mundane. The tribulations of Emma, whose surname changes as regularly as the tides, allows the author to drop all pretense, and lapse into riveting dramatic action, without comedic conveniences, to concoct narrative tension for a high crescendo.
I was delighted by the Rococo furniture descriptions, elaborate visual collage work, even as the tone of the book mellows, matures into solemn, well-paced storytelling, recounting character backstory, and in the final part construes through legalized, parodic language a formal approach, and puts on further sophistication, ornamentation, and vernacular.
All around an impressive and entirely unique work of fiction.
Simple concepts are infused with elaborate invention, complex scenarios are spun out for the sheer novelty of the method, archly described by Señor Stitch. His writing is constantly surprising, and the fecundity of his language deserves all the accolades. Sagging Meniscus publishes unconventional literature, and this fits in with their mystique.
At bottom, amid the multifarious themes tackled in this novel, a few stand-outs are: Domestic violence, tenderness, and family trial. It is cheekily old fashioned and postmodern at the same time. Also more substantial than its slim design would lead you to believe.
The author contemplates human relations with stark and unabashed honesty, sidelong, through the medium of parody, across a wide array of settings, all amply described, immersive, and brutally comic, the pages beset with gestures both lurid and poignant.
The high production quality and elegant design are enough to lure you toward the paperback version as opposed to the ebook, I wager, but the inherent mystery in the setting and the precise narration will likely stick with you.
Noranbole is one of our lenses onto this bizarre version of the world. At first depicted as the ideal feminine alongside Urine, who is seen as trouble and undesirable. Later development’s in the characters’ lives belie these simple categorizations.
The strange relationships to come are explicated through suggestive, experimental, playful dialogue, exquisitely wrought oddness, and bland but multifaceted observations, as imagery and commentary combine to construct an eerie depth of setting.
The mysterious lake, unplumbed, affords the narrator more opportunity to enact his string-based mania for measurement. This is our opening dose of comical, hyperbolic strangeness. More magical realism awaits, as characters discuss such precise aversions and troubles as occur at every juncture, hinting at the underlying mechanisms of their personas. Hapless wannabes, businessmen with quirky agendas, sports commentators with religious commitment all make appearances. All the while, the author is punning, funning, with boisterous improv, raptalk rhythm, rare vocab, as the wolves of his atmospheric suggestion wait in the margins. Some of these portrayals make use of skewed English and malapropisms, mutilating speech for comic effect, with exaggerated wordplay, charming with smarm, often putting things in an off-putting way, until the absurdity is ratcheted up, until miracles occur and are taken at face value. This is all underpinned with exotic and precise details.
Spattered with foreign phrases, colorful sideline characters the exact opposite of clichés, wacky names, impromptu branding, and multicultural spice take us to the midway point in the story, where bureaucratic corporate satire takes over. It is seen as an accumulation of its constituent people, their flaws compounding by virtue of organizing into a larger body. Improvised business jargon provides plentiful chuckles. I was reminded of the Strugatsky Bros. in Monday Begins on Saturday. The vicissitudes of working at an emporium are some of the most enjoyable parts of the novel. Wheedling, ingratiating blowhards and buffoons, corporate double-speak, overreacting caricatures and more, will stick in the memory. It is an extravaganza, with diverse inclusion of foodstuffs, a pleasure-filled romp to delight the senses ensues, utilizing a splendid variety of metafictional devices. The winner for best Pynchonian name in the book is Amerideath.
Some semantics, commentary, and perverse behavior are thrown in allow Stitch to play human follyball with these fictional lives. Meat patty flipping hobbyists? Why not? If that is not enough, with searing intelligence, he pulls off the multi-hundred word sentence. The on-the-nose humor is sustained until it begins to feel like Monty Python with a few steampunk stylings, chock full of morbidity and hilarious hijinks. From Big City to Small Town, we traverse Emma’s section of the novel to be confronted with something entirely different. The book employs a more traditional narrative here, with focus on drama and depth of character. He satirizes small town life as well as city life but through a new lens, displaying a knowledge of etiquette and social mores, through delusions and portmanteaus.
The peculiarities of Emma’s hubbies are anything but ordinary. They are repressed and representative archetypal characters, through which he explores the fears of parenting and marriage, the perils of home life, and familial petulance. These querulous, well-sculpted characters are fodder for his ravening wit, not bereft of poetry or poetic license, and often succumbing to literary tricksterism. Emma's creative childcare, the novel's depiction of parental obsolescence, woes, and power struggles, is on point, being a world unto itself. This departure from the absurdities of the satire to enlarge upon pastoral domestics are never mundane. The tribulations of Emma, whose surname changes as regularly as the tides, allows the author to drop all pretense, and lapse into riveting dramatic action, without comedic conveniences, to concoct narrative tension for a high crescendo.
I was delighted by the Rococo furniture descriptions, elaborate visual collage work, even as the tone of the book mellows, matures into solemn, well-paced storytelling, recounting character backstory, and in the final part construes through legalized, parodic language a formal approach, and puts on further sophistication, ornamentation, and vernacular.
All around an impressive and entirely unique work of fiction.
December 6, 2020
A major addition to the shelf of confounding novels you read without conventional comprehension but can't give up on thanks to committed dramatization, attractive dialogue, attentive language, and a general sense of inventive, playful, good-natured Emerald Isle insanity.
December 4, 2021
“Stitch flicks his blade around all the important things in life, isolating absurdities, nicking arteries. He deflates pretension at every turn. He throws images like tarot cards. He's a caustic humorist with serious intent. His novel invites you to view the world as fundamentally absurd and usually awful, but also to recognize that laughter is a mighty, and cleansing, recompense.” The New York Times
“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.”
The TLS
“Stitch’s prose is mesmerising...while his ability to weave whimsy and magical realism into an accented, almost anachronistically antiquated style is practically sublime.”
The Irish Times
“Splice regency romance with Cold Comfort Farm and The Silence of the Lambs, then transpose the whole caboodle to a claustrophobic, snow-smothered rural landscape and indeterminate present day. The result is a bracing and bizarre escapade powered by some electric prose that is by turns bawdy, grotesque and droll.” The Observer
“An audacious love story as well as all the other things it is, Lake of Urine thumbs its nose at any attempt to describe it coherently, but this is part of its maddening charm.”
The Sunday Independent
“LAKE OF URINE is 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
“Absolutely savage...absurdly funny...truly original...In a story that takes us from a parochial redneck backwater to the sparkly lights of Big City and back again, we (loosely) follow the fate of the Wakeling sisters, both of them casualties of their monstrous mother, Emma Wakeling. A supporting cast of batshit crazies, all clawing for their share of the limelight, dance onstage and off again as we reel from one delicious scene to another and the plotline shifts from now to then, from here to there and back to here. If that sounds a little chaotic, I can only assure you that the chaos is strictly in the comedy. The novel itself is as tight as a fist and punches twice as hard.”
Anne Cunningham, book critic, Irish Independent
“With prose that manages to be simultaneously exuberant and remarkably efficient, and an outrageous, slapstick approach to yarn-spinning, 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
“A strange and wonderful thing. There are sentences and phrases to relish on every page, and you will find yourself wanting to read chunks of it out loud to everyone you meet.”
Katherine Graham, THEATRE RE
“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
“There’s a world in these pages, a world as rich and strange as any that I’ve encountered in literature, and as well realised.”
John Patrick Higgins, author of Every Day I Wake Up Hopeful
“Beautiful literary prose, depicting even the most grotesque details, conveys this book’s commitment to what it holds dear. Reminiscent of Confederacy of Dunces’ bawdy humor and Wes Anderson’s colorful, yet darkly whimsical cinematic compositions, Lake of Urine is a bizarre, raucous love story with ornate surprises at every turn.” Mari Carlson (Foreword Reviews, Bookpage, Midwest Book Review)
“Exploring this world is an absolute delight. At every turn we encounter new depths of depravity, new heights of brilliance… and all of it is rendered in prose that is smart and squalid and layered enough to evoke – and perhaps even rival – James Joyce. Lake of Urine is an anarchic, whip-smart ride through a world that mashes together the real and the impossible, the noble and the gaudy, the base and the divine. It is filmic, quick, dirty, and fuelled by an unstoppable energy from the first page to the last.”
Krishan Coupland, Neon
“This is the type of book I adore: intelligent, whimsically hilarious, and unapologetically bizarre. It is everything I love about surrealism and bizarro put together in one masterpiece. Without hyperbole, I can say that it is my favorite modern bizarre novel.”
Zé Burns, Babou 691
"Stitch’s imagination is envy-inducing. 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.)"
Tyler Dempsey, Heavy Feather Review
"It is rare in the book world to find a story that is truly original while also being eminently engaging...dark, quirky, humorous, and engrossing. This is a singular and satisfying read."
Jackie Law, Never Imitate
"An absolute blast."
Annabookbel
"Guillermo Stitch’s Lake of Urine is a wild ride, which from the get-go sets out its terms and conditions: ‘If anybody tells you this story isn’t true they are lying. It is a true story; I am lying if it isn’t, and I don’t lie,’ reads its playful, meta-modernist opening gambit. 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."
Luke Warde, Totally Dublin
“This is definitely not traditional fiction (thankfully)…. Professionally speaking, I’m not permitted to disclose what is in the lake of urine. A clue, however: Stitch’s title is not cruel.”
Kevin Kiely, Books Ireland
“Fairytale tropes meet modernist angst in search of stable coordinates...takes the absurdist satire to its logical conclusion...every character is an eccentric blend of character and nuance...brilliant tragicomedy.”
Aneesha Puri
“Like any successful satirist, Stitch rejoices in contortion, painful and hilarious, and his shape-shifting is aimed at breaking ‘the monopoly of established reality (i.e. of those who established it),’ as Herbert Marcuse put it, in order ‘to define what is real.’ Lake of Urine suggests that, even if the magic has gone out of this world, fiction might be able to offer a saving charm, or open a portal to a new one.”
Lucas Spiro, Arts Fuse
“There’s skilful alchemy at play here…. an unconventional and iconoclastic novel.”
Splice
“I can’t decide whether this novel brings Voltaire or David Foster Wallace to mind, but I doubt either could do a better job of bantering about the savage human spirit than Stitch does here in 2020…. It’s dirty. It’s funny. It’s complex. It’s the kind of debut novel that most authors could only hope for. Guillermo Stitch is just the kind of writer that this year needs. Check out this book before the chaos ends.”
Mallory Smart, Maudlin House
“Such a talent for world-building. An abundance of funny, bizarre, imaginative touches.”
Alastair Mabbott, Herald Scotland
“What a deliciously bizarre book! Here is the type of novel that can be endlessly picked apart for its meanings…. a great addition to the modern literary universe.”
Electra Nanou, Book Breath
“[Stitch’s] writing is constantly surprising, and the fecundity of his language deserves all the accolades…. At bottom, amid the multifarious themes tackled in this novel, a few stand-outs are: Domestic violence, tenderness, and family trial. It is cheekily old fashioned and postmodern at the same time…. The author contemplates human relations with stark and unabashed honesty, sidelong, through the medium of parody, across a wide array of settings, all amply described, immersive, and brutally comic, the pages beset with gestures both lurid and poignant…. All around an impressive and entirely unique work of fiction.”
L.S.Popovich
“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.”
The TLS
“Stitch’s prose is mesmerising...while his ability to weave whimsy and magical realism into an accented, almost anachronistically antiquated style is practically sublime.”
The Irish Times
“Splice regency romance with Cold Comfort Farm and The Silence of the Lambs, then transpose the whole caboodle to a claustrophobic, snow-smothered rural landscape and indeterminate present day. The result is a bracing and bizarre escapade powered by some electric prose that is by turns bawdy, grotesque and droll.” The Observer
“An audacious love story as well as all the other things it is, Lake of Urine thumbs its nose at any attempt to describe it coherently, but this is part of its maddening charm.”
The Sunday Independent
“LAKE OF URINE is 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
“Absolutely savage...absurdly funny...truly original...In a story that takes us from a parochial redneck backwater to the sparkly lights of Big City and back again, we (loosely) follow the fate of the Wakeling sisters, both of them casualties of their monstrous mother, Emma Wakeling. A supporting cast of batshit crazies, all clawing for their share of the limelight, dance onstage and off again as we reel from one delicious scene to another and the plotline shifts from now to then, from here to there and back to here. If that sounds a little chaotic, I can only assure you that the chaos is strictly in the comedy. The novel itself is as tight as a fist and punches twice as hard.”
Anne Cunningham, book critic, Irish Independent
“With prose that manages to be simultaneously exuberant and remarkably efficient, and an outrageous, slapstick approach to yarn-spinning, 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
“A strange and wonderful thing. There are sentences and phrases to relish on every page, and you will find yourself wanting to read chunks of it out loud to everyone you meet.”
Katherine Graham, THEATRE RE
“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
“There’s a world in these pages, a world as rich and strange as any that I’ve encountered in literature, and as well realised.”
John Patrick Higgins, author of Every Day I Wake Up Hopeful
“Beautiful literary prose, depicting even the most grotesque details, conveys this book’s commitment to what it holds dear. Reminiscent of Confederacy of Dunces’ bawdy humor and Wes Anderson’s colorful, yet darkly whimsical cinematic compositions, Lake of Urine is a bizarre, raucous love story with ornate surprises at every turn.” Mari Carlson (Foreword Reviews, Bookpage, Midwest Book Review)
“Exploring this world is an absolute delight. At every turn we encounter new depths of depravity, new heights of brilliance… and all of it is rendered in prose that is smart and squalid and layered enough to evoke – and perhaps even rival – James Joyce. Lake of Urine is an anarchic, whip-smart ride through a world that mashes together the real and the impossible, the noble and the gaudy, the base and the divine. It is filmic, quick, dirty, and fuelled by an unstoppable energy from the first page to the last.”
Krishan Coupland, Neon
“This is the type of book I adore: intelligent, whimsically hilarious, and unapologetically bizarre. It is everything I love about surrealism and bizarro put together in one masterpiece. Without hyperbole, I can say that it is my favorite modern bizarre novel.”
Zé Burns, Babou 691
"Stitch’s imagination is envy-inducing. 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.)"
Tyler Dempsey, Heavy Feather Review
"It is rare in the book world to find a story that is truly original while also being eminently engaging...dark, quirky, humorous, and engrossing. This is a singular and satisfying read."
Jackie Law, Never Imitate
"An absolute blast."
Annabookbel
"Guillermo Stitch’s Lake of Urine is a wild ride, which from the get-go sets out its terms and conditions: ‘If anybody tells you this story isn’t true they are lying. It is a true story; I am lying if it isn’t, and I don’t lie,’ reads its playful, meta-modernist opening gambit. 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."
Luke Warde, Totally Dublin
“This is definitely not traditional fiction (thankfully)…. Professionally speaking, I’m not permitted to disclose what is in the lake of urine. A clue, however: Stitch’s title is not cruel.”
Kevin Kiely, Books Ireland
“Fairytale tropes meet modernist angst in search of stable coordinates...takes the absurdist satire to its logical conclusion...every character is an eccentric blend of character and nuance...brilliant tragicomedy.”
Aneesha Puri
“Like any successful satirist, Stitch rejoices in contortion, painful and hilarious, and his shape-shifting is aimed at breaking ‘the monopoly of established reality (i.e. of those who established it),’ as Herbert Marcuse put it, in order ‘to define what is real.’ Lake of Urine suggests that, even if the magic has gone out of this world, fiction might be able to offer a saving charm, or open a portal to a new one.”
Lucas Spiro, Arts Fuse
“There’s skilful alchemy at play here…. an unconventional and iconoclastic novel.”
Splice
“I can’t decide whether this novel brings Voltaire or David Foster Wallace to mind, but I doubt either could do a better job of bantering about the savage human spirit than Stitch does here in 2020…. It’s dirty. It’s funny. It’s complex. It’s the kind of debut novel that most authors could only hope for. Guillermo Stitch is just the kind of writer that this year needs. Check out this book before the chaos ends.”
Mallory Smart, Maudlin House
“Such a talent for world-building. An abundance of funny, bizarre, imaginative touches.”
Alastair Mabbott, Herald Scotland
“What a deliciously bizarre book! Here is the type of novel that can be endlessly picked apart for its meanings…. a great addition to the modern literary universe.”
Electra Nanou, Book Breath
“[Stitch’s] writing is constantly surprising, and the fecundity of his language deserves all the accolades…. At bottom, amid the multifarious themes tackled in this novel, a few stand-outs are: Domestic violence, tenderness, and family trial. It is cheekily old fashioned and postmodern at the same time…. The author contemplates human relations with stark and unabashed honesty, sidelong, through the medium of parody, across a wide array of settings, all amply described, immersive, and brutally comic, the pages beset with gestures both lurid and poignant…. All around an impressive and entirely unique work of fiction.”
L.S.Popovich
June 15, 2020
This book is totally Wacker-doodle-dandy to the max! I love a good absurd novel and this is a mighty fine addition to the genre. Yes it does feel like the author is using the luck of dice to create the plot and there is no way of guessing what is going on until you get told but at it's heart is a wonderful story full of love and heartbreak, exploring the everyday fears that people experience...not the silly ones about spiders...fear brought on by the birth of a child and making sure they get the right life, of being out of your depth and whether or not you'll be the next world champion burger flipper. At least that is my interpretation and like any great piece of art there are so many different ways of seeing this story.
The book follows the four main characters; Mr Seiler, obsessed with measuring everything with string, he can even measure the length of winter, this is until he becomes obsessed with measuring the depth of a lake. Next up is Noranbole, she has her own Cinderella story, from doing her chores to working in The Big City. Then Noranbole and Urine's mother, Emma Wakeling, tells us about each of her husbands interspersed with chapters describing the house and family life. The book is concluded with Urine's story which gives you a cracking finale.
Noranbole's story was my favourite part of the book, the satire surrounding The Big City and the Giant company that she works with was very clever, I got the feeling that I was reading a new book by Vonnegut for a while.
This will most definitely be re-read by me in the future, give it a couple of years and I'll be spotting new things I missed first time around. A fine novel well worth reading.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2020...
The book follows the four main characters; Mr Seiler, obsessed with measuring everything with string, he can even measure the length of winter, this is until he becomes obsessed with measuring the depth of a lake. Next up is Noranbole, she has her own Cinderella story, from doing her chores to working in The Big City. Then Noranbole and Urine's mother, Emma Wakeling, tells us about each of her husbands interspersed with chapters describing the house and family life. The book is concluded with Urine's story which gives you a cracking finale.
Noranbole's story was my favourite part of the book, the satire surrounding The Big City and the Giant company that she works with was very clever, I got the feeling that I was reading a new book by Vonnegut for a while.
This will most definitely be re-read by me in the future, give it a couple of years and I'll be spotting new things I missed first time around. A fine novel well worth reading.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2020...
July 26, 2020
That was a blast. Bonkers but in a good way. Don't expect sensitive character development, but do expect funny, bizarre humour
I liked the way the 4 sections were structured differently, especially the shifts back and forth on time in the Emma Wakeling section
I liked the way the 4 sections were structured differently, especially the shifts back and forth on time in the Emma Wakeling section
November 24, 2020
I’ve been trying to say something smart about this book because I like it so much. But man, is it hard. It’s so smart, and profane, and unique—and it’s just a really funny book, and explaining the joke would rob it of its power (although I’ll do my best). The best I can do is say it’s like that medley that finishes Abbey Road, shifting chaotically from one fun idea to the next while forming something completely whole and unified.
Book 1 is about Seiler’s obsession with measuring things, culminating with his comically tragic (or maybe tragically comic) quest to measure the depths Swan Hill Lake. But it’s also the story of Seiler’s employer, Emma Wakeling, and her daughters, Noranbole and Urine (yes, her name is Urine).
Book 2: The story of Noranbole after she goes off to Big City (yes, the placed is named Big City) with her fiancé Bernard (whose dialogue is spoken in a multitude of languages like a living breathing Tower of Babel), becoming the CEO of the kind of big company (not called Big Company, surprisingly enough) where everyone speaks in ridiculous buzzwords and industry jargon. There’s also a delightful burger flipping contest.
Book 3: the story of Emma Wakeling and her numerous ex-husbands, each one horrible in his own unique way. (this was probably my favorite section of the bunch, as Stitch brilliantly uses the rooms of Emma’s home to tell the story of her life).
Book 4: A return to Swan Hill.
Even within the segments of this wild medley, there are these crazy little shifts. In addition to Bernard’s Tower of Babel-esque dialogue, the residents of Swan Hill all seem to speak with their own accents—some speak with the elevated tone of Romantic literature, some speak with a cowboy drawl, while others have seem to have a regional English dialect. That he’s able to manage all of these crazy moving parts is a feat in literary engineering.
This is one of the most inventive and funniest things I’ve read. It’s a weird little book, yet at the same time, it feels very much like a traditional novel. It’s just so hard to categorize because you’re so overwhelmed by the playfulness you can barely think straight. Guillermo Stitch is clearly having fun, and he’s going to make sure you’re buried in it. If this book were a person, it would be Nicolas Cage, and that’s probably the smartest thing I can say about it.
Book 1 is about Seiler’s obsession with measuring things, culminating with his comically tragic (or maybe tragically comic) quest to measure the depths Swan Hill Lake. But it’s also the story of Seiler’s employer, Emma Wakeling, and her daughters, Noranbole and Urine (yes, her name is Urine).
Book 2: The story of Noranbole after she goes off to Big City (yes, the placed is named Big City) with her fiancé Bernard (whose dialogue is spoken in a multitude of languages like a living breathing Tower of Babel), becoming the CEO of the kind of big company (not called Big Company, surprisingly enough) where everyone speaks in ridiculous buzzwords and industry jargon. There’s also a delightful burger flipping contest.
Book 3: the story of Emma Wakeling and her numerous ex-husbands, each one horrible in his own unique way. (this was probably my favorite section of the bunch, as Stitch brilliantly uses the rooms of Emma’s home to tell the story of her life).
Book 4: A return to Swan Hill.
Even within the segments of this wild medley, there are these crazy little shifts. In addition to Bernard’s Tower of Babel-esque dialogue, the residents of Swan Hill all seem to speak with their own accents—some speak with the elevated tone of Romantic literature, some speak with a cowboy drawl, while others have seem to have a regional English dialect. That he’s able to manage all of these crazy moving parts is a feat in literary engineering.
This is one of the most inventive and funniest things I’ve read. It’s a weird little book, yet at the same time, it feels very much like a traditional novel. It’s just so hard to categorize because you’re so overwhelmed by the playfulness you can barely think straight. Guillermo Stitch is clearly having fun, and he’s going to make sure you’re buried in it. If this book were a person, it would be Nicolas Cage, and that’s probably the smartest thing I can say about it.
January 8, 2020
This is an extraordinary book. It is dazzling in its breadth, in its seemingly endless styles and attitudes, in its sheer, niggardly actualisation. The fact that it exists at all in the 21st Century is astonishing. I feel like it has been burped up from the last decades of the previous century, a motherless child with an awful lot of busy, chatty uncles, nudging each other out of the way and getting pipe smuts all over the crib.
It’s a Cinderella story where we spend most of our time rooting for the monstrous matriarch because of course you would. Emma Wakeling, this iron mother, is a beautiful grotesque. Her story is by turns funny, horrific, exacting and heroically degrading. Emma’s leverage into the world of the book as a semi-pro masturbatrix is funny and reasonable within the terms of the story: she’s a sociopath who, like internet clickbait, has learned “this one weird trick”. She is a dark heart of this novel, devouring it whole, while her daughter, the pragmatic and practicable Norambole is chased down and brought to heel.
Don’t worry about Norambole though. This is still a fairy tale and she is our principal girl. She is also competent, clever and the only person capable of viable communication in the book. She is a candid Candide, a prolix Pollyanna: more sinned against than Cinderella.
My mother also appears in the text as Phinoola Quigg the permanently suspicious and always quizzical Irish mother. Or perhaps it is the author’s Irish mother or possibly all Irish mothers. Regardless of her provenance Phinoola is a fine comic creation and a delicious treat.
The book is riddled with alarming and vivid imagery: I can’t shake the depiction of a grimacing Pastor riding his flaming coach and horses back home, his matchstick silhouette spindle-thin in the fire. The book is full of these extraordinary moments. You can see this story: it springs up in your hands like a pop-up book, or one of Emma’s gentlemen callers.
This book is a Southern Gothic satire of the modern world set against a back-ground of burger flipping and fringe scientific experimentation. The author appears occasionally in the guise of mad tinkerer, Seilor, a scientific empiricist with tunnel vision and an indifference to humanity in pursuit of his goals. I can think of no finer portrait in prose of the man who wrote this book.
Guillermo Stitch is a profoundly gifted writer. His tenacity, patience and invention are stunning. There’s a world in these pages, a world as rich and strange as any that I’ve encountered in literature, and as well realised. This book is a proper, dip-in-able old fashioned story where you will want to scribble in the margins and dog ear the pages and read it in the bath and smother in hot dropped butter. It’s a luxury product, something you need to soak up. It’s not an easy book, its rough terrain and heavy weather, but it is worth pursuing to the undoubtedly bitter end. I fucking loved it. And I’ve read it twice.
It’s a Cinderella story where we spend most of our time rooting for the monstrous matriarch because of course you would. Emma Wakeling, this iron mother, is a beautiful grotesque. Her story is by turns funny, horrific, exacting and heroically degrading. Emma’s leverage into the world of the book as a semi-pro masturbatrix is funny and reasonable within the terms of the story: she’s a sociopath who, like internet clickbait, has learned “this one weird trick”. She is a dark heart of this novel, devouring it whole, while her daughter, the pragmatic and practicable Norambole is chased down and brought to heel.
Don’t worry about Norambole though. This is still a fairy tale and she is our principal girl. She is also competent, clever and the only person capable of viable communication in the book. She is a candid Candide, a prolix Pollyanna: more sinned against than Cinderella.
My mother also appears in the text as Phinoola Quigg the permanently suspicious and always quizzical Irish mother. Or perhaps it is the author’s Irish mother or possibly all Irish mothers. Regardless of her provenance Phinoola is a fine comic creation and a delicious treat.
The book is riddled with alarming and vivid imagery: I can’t shake the depiction of a grimacing Pastor riding his flaming coach and horses back home, his matchstick silhouette spindle-thin in the fire. The book is full of these extraordinary moments. You can see this story: it springs up in your hands like a pop-up book, or one of Emma’s gentlemen callers.
This book is a Southern Gothic satire of the modern world set against a back-ground of burger flipping and fringe scientific experimentation. The author appears occasionally in the guise of mad tinkerer, Seilor, a scientific empiricist with tunnel vision and an indifference to humanity in pursuit of his goals. I can think of no finer portrait in prose of the man who wrote this book.
Guillermo Stitch is a profoundly gifted writer. His tenacity, patience and invention are stunning. There’s a world in these pages, a world as rich and strange as any that I’ve encountered in literature, and as well realised. This book is a proper, dip-in-able old fashioned story where you will want to scribble in the margins and dog ear the pages and read it in the bath and smother in hot dropped butter. It’s a luxury product, something you need to soak up. It’s not an easy book, its rough terrain and heavy weather, but it is worth pursuing to the undoubtedly bitter end. I fucking loved it. And I’ve read it twice.
February 25, 2022
A new Candide. Ribald and thoroughly escapist. You can escape to the bottom of the lake. You may or may not return.
It is framed around the fairytale of Iron John (which many know from Robert Bly's bestseller rather than directly from the Brothers Grimm), in which a Wild Man is pulled from the bottom of an enchanted pond.
Lake of Urine features the beautiful and good-hearted Noranbole, who does scullery maid labor at home, and her ridiculous sister Urine, who, for unfathomable reasons, the local boys prefer. The problem facing the town is that people disappear in the enchanted pond. The narrator bravely hunts the source of the problem and is almost sucked in: "My little boat reared up at a near ninety degrees, spilling its contents in to the lake — my sandwiches, my coat, some angling odds and ends." What else can we attach to the end of the string to plumb the depths of this lake? How about Urine's puppy with flippers duct-taped to its hind paws? (Ah, the critter on the book's cover.)
Having read this once before, when I repeated my reading experience a couple years later, I noted "the toesnappingly cold trek through wolf-infested forest" and the resonance of the question: "What is it about bad people that makes them so adhesive?"
A genre-busting, fresh-mouthed modern fairytale.
It is framed around the fairytale of Iron John (which many know from Robert Bly's bestseller rather than directly from the Brothers Grimm), in which a Wild Man is pulled from the bottom of an enchanted pond.
Lake of Urine features the beautiful and good-hearted Noranbole, who does scullery maid labor at home, and her ridiculous sister Urine, who, for unfathomable reasons, the local boys prefer. The problem facing the town is that people disappear in the enchanted pond. The narrator bravely hunts the source of the problem and is almost sucked in: "My little boat reared up at a near ninety degrees, spilling its contents in to the lake — my sandwiches, my coat, some angling odds and ends." What else can we attach to the end of the string to plumb the depths of this lake? How about Urine's puppy with flippers duct-taped to its hind paws? (Ah, the critter on the book's cover.)
Having read this once before, when I repeated my reading experience a couple years later, I noted "the toesnappingly cold trek through wolf-infested forest" and the resonance of the question: "What is it about bad people that makes them so adhesive?"
A genre-busting, fresh-mouthed modern fairytale.
April 8, 2020
Lake of Urine, Guillermo Stitch, 200 pages. What an oddball novel! On one hand, it’s a psychological saga of child abuse in perpetuity, on the other hand it’s a satire about vacuous language, and on the other, other hand—why not, right?—it sports plot and action from the Planet 14. The abuse: Emma, mother of half-sisters Noranbole and Urine (note well, that is not Ur-een, but yes, Urine), was raised by a mother who never came in contact with her during childhood but spied on her through drilled holes in the walls. And a father who seems the epitome of an old-time Calvinist preacher. Is it any wonder that Emma has run through nine, by my count, husbands, and that she is infatuated with giving men—any men!—hand jobs? Is it any wonder that she hires an incompetent, somewhat crazed man to guard her two daughters? The satire: Noranbole escapes with her beau and goes to Big City, where she becomes an all-powerful executive of Terra Forma. Here’s a brief speech by her press secretary, who goes by the name of . . . ahem, Vacuity: “Oops, going to have to correction that, Nor . . . Ms Wakeling . . . We already have an extraordinary meeting schedule for early next week—your own, to go over the new proposals. Excitement! To avoidance any confusion, I’ll go ahead and allocate super extraordinary status to the meeting already underway.” The meeting underway comes up with little concrete detail, other than some “pipeline” that seemingly won’t be built. “Disaster,” “catastrophe,” “radical re-think,” “fiasco,” are tossed about. Noranbole asks if the leader in charge likes money. Everyone at the table is quiet. Finally someone asks if Noranbole is suggesting they bribe the leader. Nope, Noranbole replies. “What I’m proposing is . . . we give him lots of this money.” “Clever,” “Inspired,” now get bandied about. The Planet 14: The man Emma hires to take care of her two daughters uses string to test the depth of a local and unsoundable lake. He tries several times and finally ties daughter Urine to the string and drops her in the lake. Four hundred, five hundred feet, and more, down she goes. Well, that’s one oddity, wouldn’t you say? And then Noranbole’s boyfriend, Bernard, speaks in every language except English it seems. Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew—even binary at one point. Noranbole is the sole interpreter. So is Bernard a genius? Well gee, he’s awfully good at chores, anyway. And . . . he does win the International Meat Flipping Championship, so don’t ask too much.
Occasionally this novel becomes too convoluted in either its plot or language for my taste, but overall it’s a fun, oddball read. And the abuse part? Well, yeah, it’s served out true enough.
Occasionally this novel becomes too convoluted in either its plot or language for my taste, but overall it’s a fun, oddball read. And the abuse part? Well, yeah, it’s served out true enough.
December 7, 2020
loved, blurbed -- "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."
but don't trust my word, dwight garner delivered in kind: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/bo...
but don't trust my word, dwight garner delivered in kind: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/bo...
December 20, 2019
This book is a strange and wonderful thing. The story twists through any number of fairytale tropes, but these are never made boring or safe. Madness and violence abound in a world of colourful, and often odious, characters. Written in four distinct but interwoven parts, it follows the Wakeling family and the various neighbours and acquaintances they accrue. The plot takes us from the one horse town where the madman Seiler is obsessed with measuring all that he knows with string, to the city Noranbole escapes to, building a life for herself beyond the clutches of her home town and her mother, and back again. We also trace the story back through family history, seeing the indelible marks left on Noranbole’s mother through her upbringing, the house she has lived in all her life and the various men who have passed through.
In all its chaos, though, there is something much softer at the heart of the book, and even as it flirts with troubling motifs and characters, what actually emerges is a really compelling study of love.
Most strikingly, the storytelling is bound up with an excellent, and deeply funny, play with language, All the way through the writing plays with style, genre and language with an exuberance and an unbridled sense of fiction that makes it an utter delight to read. There are sentences and phrases to relish on every page, and you will find yourself wanting to read chunks of it out loud to everyone you meet!
I received an advance copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.
In all its chaos, though, there is something much softer at the heart of the book, and even as it flirts with troubling motifs and characters, what actually emerges is a really compelling study of love.
Most strikingly, the storytelling is bound up with an excellent, and deeply funny, play with language, All the way through the writing plays with style, genre and language with an exuberance and an unbridled sense of fiction that makes it an utter delight to read. There are sentences and phrases to relish on every page, and you will find yourself wanting to read chunks of it out loud to everyone you meet!
I received an advance copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.
January 3, 2020
This is a terrific book. Terrifyingly absurd and yet frighteningly familiar characters are brilliantly drawn by an author that has a gift for putting words together on a page. It is witty and ghastly in equal measure and at once both disgusting and life affirming. For me it was also a story about powerful women and the silly men that surround them. While reading I could see every scene so clearly; it seemed cinematic and couldn’t help feeling convinced that the movie version should be directed by Terry Gilliam. This is so unlike anything I’ve ever read, I want to recommend it to everyone I know.
I was given a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
I was given a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
December 14, 2020
The heights of Lake of Urine were pure 6-star riffs. The novel's worth reading for the opening set piece alone, this was just one of many sentences that made me laugh out loud: "To this end I had duct-taped a pair of flippers to the hind feet of the dog and this was understandably causing some changes to its gait—a circumstance it was struggling to cope with in good spirits."
The whole book is incomprehensible (deliberately so) and I found the middle third to be a bit of a slog, but what a romp.
The whole book is incomprehensible (deliberately so) and I found the middle third to be a bit of a slog, but what a romp.
March 5, 2020
An assemblage of odd activities such as milkings, witchcraft (aka Branding), and burger-flipping, are par for the course in Guillermo Stitch’s second novel, Lake of Urine.
Meet the Wakelings, stars of this rollicking show. Near Tiny Village, Pastor Charles Wakeling, hellbent on saving lascivious women, and his demur (hidden) wife, Rose, raise their game-loving daughter, Emma, under the fastidious care of housekeeper Phinoola Quigg. Emma’s eight marriages produce two daughters, Urine and Norabole. When they come of age, Emma hires William Seiler, a scientist of a sort, to keep an eye on them. But he has other plans on his mind, as do the girls.
Plans going awry is a dominant theme. In response to husband #5, a writer, Emma confesses, “I’ve never really understood the need for fictional stories” (101). Her declaration is the least of the ironic twists this novel serves. Emma, narrator for much of the story, is unaware that the crazy yarn of which she’s a part is an absurd satire of the sacro-sanct institutions of marriage, religion, politics and corporate business, among other things. Turning the status quo, including chronology, on its head and sideways is this book's success. The tale toggles between Emma’s, Norabole’s and Urine’s adventures. Part of the pleasure is finding out how - and if - they all fit together.
True love is celebrated, on the other hand. Norabole and her beloved, epicurean husband stand by each other despite language barriers, unpredictable market forces, unruly garbage heaps and a mysterious lake stinking up the whole town. Beautiful literary prose, depicting even the most grotesque details, conveys this book’s commitment to what it holds dear.
Reminiscent of Confederacy of Dunces’ bawdy humor and Wes Anderson’s colorful, yet darkly whimsical cinematic compositions, Lake of Urine is a bizarre, raucous love story with ornate surprises at every turn.
Meet the Wakelings, stars of this rollicking show. Near Tiny Village, Pastor Charles Wakeling, hellbent on saving lascivious women, and his demur (hidden) wife, Rose, raise their game-loving daughter, Emma, under the fastidious care of housekeeper Phinoola Quigg. Emma’s eight marriages produce two daughters, Urine and Norabole. When they come of age, Emma hires William Seiler, a scientist of a sort, to keep an eye on them. But he has other plans on his mind, as do the girls.
Plans going awry is a dominant theme. In response to husband #5, a writer, Emma confesses, “I’ve never really understood the need for fictional stories” (101). Her declaration is the least of the ironic twists this novel serves. Emma, narrator for much of the story, is unaware that the crazy yarn of which she’s a part is an absurd satire of the sacro-sanct institutions of marriage, religion, politics and corporate business, among other things. Turning the status quo, including chronology, on its head and sideways is this book's success. The tale toggles between Emma’s, Norabole’s and Urine’s adventures. Part of the pleasure is finding out how - and if - they all fit together.
True love is celebrated, on the other hand. Norabole and her beloved, epicurean husband stand by each other despite language barriers, unpredictable market forces, unruly garbage heaps and a mysterious lake stinking up the whole town. Beautiful literary prose, depicting even the most grotesque details, conveys this book’s commitment to what it holds dear.
Reminiscent of Confederacy of Dunces’ bawdy humor and Wes Anderson’s colorful, yet darkly whimsical cinematic compositions, Lake of Urine is a bizarre, raucous love story with ornate surprises at every turn.
July 15, 2021
bizarre, absurd, funny
no real cohesive plot, and characters difficult to really pin down
everything is set up for mockery, from Tiny Village to Big City, our notions and pursuit of power, progress, love, commerce, prestige
even the time period is ambiguous - travelling by cart, large corporations but guided by stylistic concerns, mix of archaic and modern technology,
setting seems to be Ireland based on some of the less strange character names and on their patterns of speech
at least there are two characters in Noranbole (CEO in the city, general dog's body in home village) and Bernard (speaks every line in a different language) who seem to get each other
no real cohesive plot, and characters difficult to really pin down
everything is set up for mockery, from Tiny Village to Big City, our notions and pursuit of power, progress, love, commerce, prestige
even the time period is ambiguous - travelling by cart, large corporations but guided by stylistic concerns, mix of archaic and modern technology,
setting seems to be Ireland based on some of the less strange character names and on their patterns of speech
at least there are two characters in Noranbole (CEO in the city, general dog's body in home village) and Bernard (speaks every line in a different language) who seem to get each other
July 1, 2020
Two beginner tricks of competitive memory are 1) create a memory palace and 2) occupy it. The more absurd, obscene, lascivious, and odorous the occupants—the better. Take, for example, Abraham Lincoln masturbating your mom in a childhood bathtub as a raven consumes a severed breast on his top hat. Exhibit B: Max Headroom juggling a turkey that’s also a chainsaw. Randy Savage doing blow off the teats of an alpaca.
I rest my infatuation. Permanent vacay for the jury.
Guillermo Stitch and Madame Blavatsky, drunk one night, drew a map. Squinting, they gave it a river. Didn’t waste time on names—Big City, Small Town, Tiny Village. Magic requires haste. They drew on Big Mac® wrappers, littering the trailer house, taped it above the short-circuiting toaster.
Stitch has concocted a portable Hell.
Lake of Urine juggles polarities. Magnifies them, to smoke out hypocrisy and depravity in our obsessions—Measurement, Worth, Image.
Cars rot on cinder blocks. Marauding dogs nip heels of cousins and second-cousins on a honeymoon stroll. In the bywaters (where most of the book takes place) of the Palace, we encounter the familiar made queerer. Characters bent into Stitchian caricatures. A maid’s daughter’s first word is “mop.” Noranbole—one of the rotating-door-protagonists, daughter of Emma Wakeling and true darling of this nightmare—spends the book’s first section giving fellatio, as recipients share at great length the woes/desperation of capturing their eye’s real apple, her sister, Urine.
Females spend a minimum of 50% of their time “milking” men. Men are metronomes endlessly tilting between sex and power. Stitch has set the stage for discarded players. A family tale. Time warps across generations. Time is irrelevant. The polarities matter: man/woman, love/hate.
A soup, this world. A lake.
“Seiler,” a la narrator Willem Seiler, is the swan song. A string-scientist. Not string-theory, like yarn. Using it to measure things: snow depth, lake depth. While the most dynamic character, a canary in a coal mine, Seiler’s still afflicted by the piss affecting everyone else. Slovenly and in love with Noranbole, aroused at any prospect that could give theater to his ideas about measurement (polarities). But his outsider opinions, in frank juxtaposition to the status quo of Tiny Village, hilariously blow our hair back:
Naturally Urine looked even worse than usual that early morning up at the lake. Covering her in goose fat had been just about unbearable. I don’t know why she couldn’t have done it herself. Still, there wasn’t much of her and I would have plenty left to see me through the rest of the winter, for tatties and for Ms Wakeling to apply to my nether parts.
Stitch’s imagination is envy-inducing. 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.)
There are no handouts, though. Not in Tiny Village.
In “Noranbole,” every sentence Bernard, Noranbole’s lover, says, is in a different language, one of which belongs to binary code.
“Emma Wakeling,” the book’s third of four sections, alternates between chapters outlining Wakeling’s failed eight marriages, and chapters exploring rooms of her childhood home smack of a style even Robbe-Grillet would find erotic.
Like Joyce, Stitch has enough invented verbiage to expose just how much he gives a shit about offering your mind an anchor. He’s inviting you for a smelly swim aimed at exploding paradigms. Unlike Joyce, Stitch keeps you reading. He’s the hiking buddy that waits just long enough for you to catch up before bounding off again. The cookie crumbs are rich, jerky prose:
A silence. A lengthy silence. A lengthy, uncomfortable silence. Long and uncomfortable and silent. Very long. Noranbole sitting back on her heels. Brow furrowed, lips all aquiver, eyes down. Bernard staring at the drooped lids of his one true.
He has said it.
He is ready for death!
He isn’t breathing particularly well.
Her eyes rise in a cold stare that makes him feel sick.
“Bernard.”
“Ja, mein Schatz?”
“You got any money?”
Or the absurd jabs at late capitalism, as in the annual burger-flipping competition:
‘Flip’ Mc Side, reigning world champion, was due to arrive in Big City today . . . he’s been nursing a very severe case of burger elbow for some years now. All kept hush hush, of course. We’ve been getting him through with cortisone injections but that isn’t going to cut it this time . . . You can appreciate the billions that are tied up in an event of this scale. How many people depend on its success.
For all the frivolity, and wrong-turns, Stitch has a lofty goal:
Noranbole’s aspiration for Terra Forma was to break away entirely from the binary restraints of Classical versus Romantic and to trailblaze a wholly new approach.
I don’t want to give away too many juicy secrets. But trailblaze Lake of Urine does. And for the patient reader, who relinquishes control to Stitch, they’ll earn a back-porch-view as the old regime burns down:
“Take a good look, my dear . . . A historic moment—you can tell your grandchildren how you watched the old morality disappear one night.”
If it’s anything—and surely 100 times you’ll wonder what the fuck it is—Lake of Urine is memorable.
2020 may not see a wilder book. Bring marshmallows. It’s a snuff film. With something of a happy ending.
I rest my infatuation. Permanent vacay for the jury.
Guillermo Stitch and Madame Blavatsky, drunk one night, drew a map. Squinting, they gave it a river. Didn’t waste time on names—Big City, Small Town, Tiny Village. Magic requires haste. They drew on Big Mac® wrappers, littering the trailer house, taped it above the short-circuiting toaster.
Stitch has concocted a portable Hell.
Lake of Urine juggles polarities. Magnifies them, to smoke out hypocrisy and depravity in our obsessions—Measurement, Worth, Image.
Cars rot on cinder blocks. Marauding dogs nip heels of cousins and second-cousins on a honeymoon stroll. In the bywaters (where most of the book takes place) of the Palace, we encounter the familiar made queerer. Characters bent into Stitchian caricatures. A maid’s daughter’s first word is “mop.” Noranbole—one of the rotating-door-protagonists, daughter of Emma Wakeling and true darling of this nightmare—spends the book’s first section giving fellatio, as recipients share at great length the woes/desperation of capturing their eye’s real apple, her sister, Urine.
Females spend a minimum of 50% of their time “milking” men. Men are metronomes endlessly tilting between sex and power. Stitch has set the stage for discarded players. A family tale. Time warps across generations. Time is irrelevant. The polarities matter: man/woman, love/hate.
A soup, this world. A lake.
“Seiler,” a la narrator Willem Seiler, is the swan song. A string-scientist. Not string-theory, like yarn. Using it to measure things: snow depth, lake depth. While the most dynamic character, a canary in a coal mine, Seiler’s still afflicted by the piss affecting everyone else. Slovenly and in love with Noranbole, aroused at any prospect that could give theater to his ideas about measurement (polarities). But his outsider opinions, in frank juxtaposition to the status quo of Tiny Village, hilariously blow our hair back:
Naturally Urine looked even worse than usual that early morning up at the lake. Covering her in goose fat had been just about unbearable. I don’t know why she couldn’t have done it herself. Still, there wasn’t much of her and I would have plenty left to see me through the rest of the winter, for tatties and for Ms Wakeling to apply to my nether parts.
Stitch’s imagination is envy-inducing. 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.)
There are no handouts, though. Not in Tiny Village.
In “Noranbole,” every sentence Bernard, Noranbole’s lover, says, is in a different language, one of which belongs to binary code.
“Emma Wakeling,” the book’s third of four sections, alternates between chapters outlining Wakeling’s failed eight marriages, and chapters exploring rooms of her childhood home smack of a style even Robbe-Grillet would find erotic.
Like Joyce, Stitch has enough invented verbiage to expose just how much he gives a shit about offering your mind an anchor. He’s inviting you for a smelly swim aimed at exploding paradigms. Unlike Joyce, Stitch keeps you reading. He’s the hiking buddy that waits just long enough for you to catch up before bounding off again. The cookie crumbs are rich, jerky prose:
A silence. A lengthy silence. A lengthy, uncomfortable silence. Long and uncomfortable and silent. Very long. Noranbole sitting back on her heels. Brow furrowed, lips all aquiver, eyes down. Bernard staring at the drooped lids of his one true.
He has said it.
He is ready for death!
He isn’t breathing particularly well.
Her eyes rise in a cold stare that makes him feel sick.
“Bernard.”
“Ja, mein Schatz?”
“You got any money?”
Or the absurd jabs at late capitalism, as in the annual burger-flipping competition:
‘Flip’ Mc Side, reigning world champion, was due to arrive in Big City today . . . he’s been nursing a very severe case of burger elbow for some years now. All kept hush hush, of course. We’ve been getting him through with cortisone injections but that isn’t going to cut it this time . . . You can appreciate the billions that are tied up in an event of this scale. How many people depend on its success.
For all the frivolity, and wrong-turns, Stitch has a lofty goal:
Noranbole’s aspiration for Terra Forma was to break away entirely from the binary restraints of Classical versus Romantic and to trailblaze a wholly new approach.
I don’t want to give away too many juicy secrets. But trailblaze Lake of Urine does. And for the patient reader, who relinquishes control to Stitch, they’ll earn a back-porch-view as the old regime burns down:
“Take a good look, my dear . . . A historic moment—you can tell your grandchildren how you watched the old morality disappear one night.”
If it’s anything—and surely 100 times you’ll wonder what the fuck it is—Lake of Urine is memorable.
2020 may not see a wilder book. Bring marshmallows. It’s a snuff film. With something of a happy ending.
December 7, 2020
Weird and entertaining. Imaging a super verbose person telling you a hallucinatory dream story.
January 1, 2021
It is not often I read something that I cannot understand . I found this incomprehensible from start to finish and perhaps that is down to my own shortcomings or a dislike of anything which I believe might have been written in a deliberately esoteric manner in order that select reviewers can eulogise about it and place themselves on a higher intellectual plane than mere mortals like myself . I noticed that the back cover plaudits were all from exotic and obscure sources who I would like to explain to me why this book was “absurdly funny” or contains a world that is “ beguiling fantastic”. I could quote any number of exchanges that make no sense ( at least not to me) but would be accused of removing them from context . I can see fans of this book saying ( like so many songwriters) that the whole point of the book is that it means what you want it to mean or that it is not supposed to be “ understood” but perhaps it really is incomprehensible and so to paraphrase John Lydon - do you ever feel you have been fooled ?
February 19, 2021
Suspend your disbelief!
I chose to read a standard narrative at the same time because the contrast helped with allowing the plot here to... drown in urine, while manipulations, shall I say, continued unabated. While aided. Quite a story!
I chose to read a standard narrative at the same time because the contrast helped with allowing the plot here to... drown in urine, while manipulations, shall I say, continued unabated. While aided. Quite a story!
April 8, 2021
I'm not sure what I just read, but I loved it. It's rare that I finish a book and want to immediately start it again (in this case, partly to figure out what happened). This is kind of a grown up Alice in Wonderland, in that there is a fair amount of nonsense. It's like a fairy tale, with a wicked mother and two sisters, but I'm not sure what the "message" was, if one was intended. Rather, it was like sitting down with the most imaginative person you know, and listening to them riff. Lots of fun.
An aside, my brain couldn't wrap itself around the title - I kept pronouncing it "Your-eeeen" in my mind. But no. It's urine - as in pee. Lake of Piss.
An aside, my brain couldn't wrap itself around the title - I kept pronouncing it "Your-eeeen" in my mind. But no. It's urine - as in pee. Lake of Piss.
August 11, 2021
I laughed out loud quite a few times reading this book. Such a delightful romp through the ideas of "normal" family (and society) structures and love. All the thumbs up. Need to get a non-kindle version to share with friends.
April 17, 2024
I am thoroughly confused and dismayed. I could not begin to describe the book, or the type of reader who would take pleasure in reading it.
Be warned.
Be warned.
February 14, 2021
Minus two stars for incomprehensibility and unsettlingliness. One star restored for sheer virtuosity and excellent use of vocabulary. Pretty funny too.
December 3, 2020
The New York Times reviewer must have read only the first 30 pages in this novel. It’s a somewhat random family chronicle, an assemblage of legends and stories about a mother and two sisters in a country that resembles Ireland. It’s humorous on a number of levels, but the humor loses its punch and the novel doesn’t go anywhere.
February 26, 2021
nuts- just nuts
February 2, 2021
This book is absurdist and bizarre and very well done. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to follow but overall enjoyable
May 8, 2023
Guillermo Stitch’s Lake of Urine consists of four parts. Part I, “Seiler,” describes the narrator’s (Seiler’s) obsessive persecution of homely Ms Urine, in a way that calls to mind Harry Mathews’ Tlooth and its narrator’s murderous fixation upon Evelyn Roak. It’s a twenty-page giggle.
Part II, “Noranbole,” is named for Urine’s half sister, who has made her way to the big city and now sits at the helm of the Terra Forma corporation. She seems to be the only one capable of managing anything, because she can manage anybody; and she can manage anybody because each is a nobody, a mere collection of idiosyncrasies that she is adept at manipulating. This section contains the choicest collection of corporate blatherspeak that one is likely to find. Here is a sample:
This part is also replete with author Stitch’s unique brand of performative dialogue, which, perhaps, counts as comic relief.
In Part IV, it all comes together, kind of.
Lake of Urine is well crafted, meaningful, and subtler than its title suggests, drawing the reader forward and inward by making him supply what is inexplicit in its pages, showing (rather appallingly) more than telling. It is not so much a guilty as a grim pleasure.
Part II, “Noranbole,” is named for Urine’s half sister, who has made her way to the big city and now sits at the helm of the Terra Forma corporation. She seems to be the only one capable of managing anything, because she can manage anybody; and she can manage anybody because each is a nobody, a mere collection of idiosyncrasies that she is adept at manipulating. This section contains the choicest collection of corporate blatherspeak that one is likely to find. Here is a sample:
‘We need to talk about a radical rethink, Ms Wakeling,’ said Mr Perigo. ‘A sidestep, or perhaps a ninety degree. I don’t think we should exclude the possibility of a complete about-to, frankly.’Part III, “Emma Wakeling,” turns to Urine and Noranbole’s mother. It is ingeniously written, alternating between two sets of chapters that move in contrary chronological order, and it provides the backstory of all the other parts. Despite the cover blurbs testifying to Urine’s hilarity, these chapters are dead serious, exploring themes of domestic abuse and neglectful parenting.
‘This could deepen the crisis exponentially,’ said Mr Amerideath, ‘sending us spiraling downwards toward some sort of upheaval.’
‘Or worse,’ said Mr Drinkwater. ‘Upwards.’
‘What about any implications for the other crisis?’ asked Mr Freeze.
‘Well,’ said Mr Deer Spirit, leaning forward so everyone could see him, ‘on the bright side, it might actually resolve that one.’
‘Ooh,’ said Vacuity, ‘that would be good, wouldn’t it?’
‘Depending on how things go, of course,’ said Mr Elderkin.
‘Of course,’ said Mr Deer Spirit.
‘And we definitely can’t salvage this?’ asked Noranbole.
‘How?’ asked Mr Star Blanket. ‘I’ve been imagineering all morning. Nothing. And I’m the head of Creative.’ (p. 49)
This part is also replete with author Stitch’s unique brand of performative dialogue, which, perhaps, counts as comic relief.
The pastor [Emma’s father], who liked to think of himself as an open-minded man had, as part of his ongoing efforts with the county’s wayward women, turned to psychology. He had been leafing through a copy of Dr Hans Sittlichkeit’s Mother Abandonment: causes, symptoms, and role in the development of the contemporary strumpet and one or two of the eminent scholar’s theories had struck a little close to home. As Phinoola Quigg was fussing about him one afternoon in his study, wiping pristine surfaces and rearranging decorative items, he put his quill down.Toddler Emma’s first word had been harlot, incidentally. (p. 98)
‘I would like your advice, Phinoola Quigg.’
‘Would you indeed?’ asked the housekeeper and stopped her dusting.
‘Yes. I have been reading this book – ’
‘Have you indeed?’
‘Yes. And it says here – ’
‘Does it indeed?’
‘Does it…? But I haven’t… The book is about girls, Phinoola Quigg, and how we might, with the use of cutting-edge scientifical interventions, go about the prevention of their loosening.’
‘Well, isn’t that nice?’
‘Yes, let me just… The point is, Phinoola Quigg, that I am of the opinion that some of the theories presented by Dr Sittlichkeit – ’
‘Are you now?’
‘…may pertain, indeed may pertain very closely, to our own situation, and – ’
‘Our situation?’ The housekeeper clasped her hands.
‘The situation in this house, yes. The long and short of it is that according to modern science, it would seem that young Emma would almost certainly be the better for it if she had rather more to do with her mother than is currently the case. Rigorous studies have shown as much.’
‘Have they indeed? It all sounds very clever, doesn’t it?’
‘At the very least, I think a formal introduction is called for, don’t you? That is the matter upon which I would like to consult you. The fact is, I don’t know how to go about it. I haven’t seen the woman since last October, although there is not the slightest doubt in my mind,’ and here the pastor’s voice became shrill as his eyes darted around the room, ‘that she is listening.’
‘Right, and I suppose that’ll be my job, will it?’ (pp. 116-117)
In Part IV, it all comes together, kind of.
Lake of Urine is well crafted, meaningful, and subtler than its title suggests, drawing the reader forward and inward by making him supply what is inexplicit in its pages, showing (rather appallingly) more than telling. It is not so much a guilty as a grim pleasure.
July 23, 2025
Lake of Urine was a fun book that I just so happened upon after reading it on a list of 22 funny books that have come out since Catch-22 that deserved to be read over at the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/bo...)
Lake of Urine tells the story of Willem Sellers, a guy completely obsessed with measuring his time and his world until he happens upon the unconventional Urine (and highly feminine Noranbole) Wakeling. What comes next is a whirlwind of convoluted fun as Stitch throws us four little winky satires of major storytelling tropes, but in extremely unconventional wordplay, plot play, and random encounters that bring an imaginative and strange approach to the form of novel that I have not seen before. It is hilarious from beginning to end – a story that insists it is true that upends many trends and expectations. While the characterization is somewhat lacking, it becomes clear that the tale itself and the meandering way it is told matter more than anything else. My favorite portion was Emma Wakeling’s take on Noranbole, and the satire of Noranbole’s workplace and suitor prospects. A lot of fun and well worth the time it takes to read. I promise, it is a romp.
Lake of Urine tells the story of Willem Sellers, a guy completely obsessed with measuring his time and his world until he happens upon the unconventional Urine (and highly feminine Noranbole) Wakeling. What comes next is a whirlwind of convoluted fun as Stitch throws us four little winky satires of major storytelling tropes, but in extremely unconventional wordplay, plot play, and random encounters that bring an imaginative and strange approach to the form of novel that I have not seen before. It is hilarious from beginning to end – a story that insists it is true that upends many trends and expectations. While the characterization is somewhat lacking, it becomes clear that the tale itself and the meandering way it is told matter more than anything else. My favorite portion was Emma Wakeling’s take on Noranbole, and the satire of Noranbole’s workplace and suitor prospects. A lot of fun and well worth the time it takes to read. I promise, it is a romp.
January 26, 2021
I very much wanted to like this book. So much so that I left it on my Kindle in a "currently reading" state for a month at about 85% finished.
I just couldn't get through it, though.
It's the family saga of Emma Wakeling and her daughters Noranbole and Urine. Yes, Urine.
Although the writing is quite clever, the characters amusing, and the story completely absurd, I found it to be so random and odd that there wasn't really a thread of interest to grasp and follow through the book (well, maybe other than Emma Wakeling's "milking" of every male she could get her hands on, but even the most humorously executed masturbation joke can only carry a plot so far).
Since I had a baby recently, I did especially enjoy the background story of how Emma's mother was so terrified of other people that she couldn't even be in the presence of her own child (starting at birth! Lol).
I just couldn't get through it, though.
It's the family saga of Emma Wakeling and her daughters Noranbole and Urine. Yes, Urine.
Although the writing is quite clever, the characters amusing, and the story completely absurd, I found it to be so random and odd that there wasn't really a thread of interest to grasp and follow through the book (well, maybe other than Emma Wakeling's "milking" of every male she could get her hands on, but even the most humorously executed masturbation joke can only carry a plot so far).
Since I had a baby recently, I did especially enjoy the background story of how Emma's mother was so terrified of other people that she couldn't even be in the presence of her own child (starting at birth! Lol).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 25, 2024
Jonathan Swift... meet Thomas Pynchon.
I wouldn't call this book a pastiche; instead, it is a Swiftian satire begot in an alternate, but synchronous world. It's the tale of the Wakeling family, if you can call them a family. They rarely interact. Nary a meaningful conversation passes between any two members. Neither Reverend Wakeling, nor his wife, Rose, nor their dutiful daughter, Emma, nor her two daughters, the sometime neglected drudge Noranbole nor her preferred sister, Urine, communicates one with another. Emma has been married eight times, several ending hilariously (one brutally) and the tales of her marriages, nor much of anything perturbs these people. At the same time, true love is found, unexpectedly, if not inexplicably. Politics and politicians get skewered. People and institutions muddle along. It's funny.
I wouldn't call this book a pastiche; instead, it is a Swiftian satire begot in an alternate, but synchronous world. It's the tale of the Wakeling family, if you can call them a family. They rarely interact. Nary a meaningful conversation passes between any two members. Neither Reverend Wakeling, nor his wife, Rose, nor their dutiful daughter, Emma, nor her two daughters, the sometime neglected drudge Noranbole nor her preferred sister, Urine, communicates one with another. Emma has been married eight times, several ending hilariously (one brutally) and the tales of her marriages, nor much of anything perturbs these people. At the same time, true love is found, unexpectedly, if not inexplicably. Politics and politicians get skewered. People and institutions muddle along. It's funny.
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