Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen." was iriginally hatched in a NYC club during BEA back in 2012. It's a fun little series, where authors record themselves reading an excerpt from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.
In light of all the social distancing and recommended reduction to group events, we're happy to help support those who have recently published, or will soon be publishing, a book. It's hard enough to get your books out there, and now with the cancelation of book events and readings making it even harder, I want to do my part to help you spread the word!
Today, Guillermo Stitch joins us to read an excerpt from his novel Lake of Urine. Guillermo is also the author of the award-winning novella, Literature™. He lives in Spain.
Click on the soundcloud bar below to hear Guillermo read the excerpt "Emma Naranja" from the book
What Lake of Urine is about:
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.
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