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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

“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.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES

“A bracing and bizarre escapade powered by some electric prose that is by turns bawdy, grotesque and droll.

THE OBSERVER

“Such a talent for world-building...An abundance of funny, bizarre, imaginative touches.”

ALASTAIR MABBOTT

HERALD SCOTLAND

“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.”

HOUMAN BAREKAT

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

“Stitch’s prose is mesmerising; his vocabulary is nothing short of awesome (and I mean that in the divine sense of the word) while his ability to weave whimsy and magical realism into an accented, almost anachronistically antiquated style is practically sublime.

THE IRISH TIMES

“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

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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. Truly original. Absurdly funny. Stitch is Irish and it can’t help but seep through. From Swift to Wilde to Beckett, if you’re looking for them you’ll spot them. Winking. I imagine it’s in approval.  The novel itself is as tight as a fist and punches twice as hard.”

ANNE CUNNINGHAM

of the IRISH INDEPENDENT

   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.

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   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. 

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   And that, it turns out, is a good thing. 

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   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.

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   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.

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   "Lake of Urine" might just provide the year's literary splash. Dark and funny in equal measure, it is a sui generis odyssey 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. 

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   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.

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