Furthermore, the Lake

by Michael Casteels

124 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2025

Reviews

[Jessica Foley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Furthermore, the Lake is a poignant yet rambling portrait of a person who has lost their way. The reader does not know his name, is not given any frame of reference, yet comes away moved and possibly changed by the experienced therein.

A fascinating glimpse into a world where memory and dream collide.

[Meg W · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and surreal novel. A lot of the writing feels like poetry. I felt in it a deep loss, both of love and oneself. I wasn't sure for the first few pages but was definitely won over.

[Nick Papaxanthos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memories, but are they yours or mine? Yearning for what's gone, confused about what lies ahead, the narrator stumbles around a surreal and unforgiving world where too much goes missing and not enough remains. Melancholy, blue, and strangely comforting, the imagery is always inventive and charming, and the disorienting jumps between sections, as if this were a series of prose poems, ask us to reimagine the novel as plotless and fragmented—If you can get behind that, you'll love dipping your toes into this disarming lullaby of a lake.

[lily eubanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredible

[William John Wither]

“Before the beginning, there was brick,” Michael e. Casteels writes in Furthermore, the Lake. For his unnamed narrator, bricks symbolize the memories that, consciously or not, he had used to build the house of his life. After a breakup, he looks back at his creation, feeling small in its shadow, and wonders how he got there.

Full review for the Literary Review of Canada here.

[Rose Maloukis · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Furthermore, the Lake,” by Michael e. Casteels, is written not exactly in chapters, more like sequences that reference back and forth to one another but obliquely and smoothly. I found myself so many times saying “Ahh” and “Ohhh” in recognition of the connections, and not merely to the words but to the understanding of a shared feeling.

There’s a segment I’ve given three ♥’s. It’s about a cardboard box that opens to a view of the lake, and another box…I’d quote the whole of it but “I open a box labelled Sky, find a cloud stuffed at the bottom. I pick it up, shake it out, and wait while it slowly inflates. Inside the cloud is a box labelled…” In this short paragraph he unfolds such a beautiful landscape, both real and unreal, and we are with him in the experience.

In another ♥ marked section he’s an insomniac who keeps waking up “never prepared” exhausted “I’d wake, but I’m awake. I’d fall asleep, but the day is tapping its foot.”

In one very short piece of eight lines, he uses “I remember” seven times! Yet it all makes perfect sense and isn’t annoying in the least. It flows and hangs together. This is true of the whole novel.

There’s a statistics research group doing a survey. You won’t want to miss those calls.

His subjects show up again and again; the lake, the sky and clouds, a significant toothbrush, and several other ordinary things that become wonderous.

Poets and writers love Blue and in Casteel’s hands it is a new color. Oh, you can revel in it!