Casteels

Furthermore, the Lake is an artfully disjointed novel whose narrator--too fearful of commitment to commit to a name--navigates a world where memory and dream intermingle. This constant blurring of both time and place suffuses his day-to-day life with uncertainty: an evening walk might last for seasons, and staff parties might never end. An existential crisis that arises when he orders scones leaves him dislocated in his own life. Through a series of semi-connected vignettes, he struggles to find his way back. This quest foregrounds an exploration of loss that cascades into a series of losses, as he traverses a Calvinoesque city, whose streets swap signs, that is emerging around him. Michael e. Casteels’ novel integrates prose poetry, lists, surrealism, shards of conventional narrative to create a deeply human story of contemporary urban alienation.

Michael e. Casteels is a writer, musician, collage artist, outdoor enthusiast, part-time massage therapist, and stay-at-home dad. His work has appeared across Canada and internationally--most recently, the collage Westerns ONDO (nOIR: Z, 2022) and The Man with the Spider Scar (Puddles of Sky Press, 2020). His poetry collection The Last White House at the End of the Row of White Houses (Invisible Publishing) came out in 2016. Michael is the editor, designer, and bookmaker at Puddles of Sky Press in Kingston, where he lives, as he has for the majority of his life, within walking distance of Lake Ontario.