A Cassette Rewinding Sounds Like a Man Screaming as he Falls From a Precipice
by Cyril D. Broughton
It�s late 1999, and protagonist Ferdinand Blankensopft is halfway through his fourth term as President of the Flat Earth Society, New Mexico Division. As the millennium creeps in, Blankensopft devises a stratagem for boosting the fortunes of his befuddled organization. His plan: To set sail for the edge of the earth with an entourage of comrades three days prior to the turn of the century. Francis finds a kindred spirit in Gertrude MacKenzie, founder of the Heliocentric Universe Association, but his fellow group members prove none too eager to sail off the edge of the earth for the cause.
Seventy-two hours before the dissolution of the 20th century, Francis and Gertrude set sail from the coast of California with only scant supplies and the malevolent Houghton, Gertrude�s seemingly-clairvoyant parrot. Their ensuing voyage becomes an unnerving, and at times poignant and hilarious, vision of desperation, love, and mental disintegration.
Cyril D. Broughton lives and works in deep cover somewhere in northern British Columbia. He rarely is seen in public, but once garnered a puzzled look from J.K. Rowling at a party.
�Marvelous! Broughton�s narrative reads like travel writing on mescaline.� (The Minus Times)
�With his new novel, Cyril Broughton masterfully humanizes the by-now ubiquitous cult freak � a feat few have even attempted.� (Dose Magazine)
�A Cassette Rewinding� is a grim, intimidating, beautiful, and, above all, important book.� (Sam Lipsyte)
"A Cassette Rewinding� is a terrifically stunning piece of writing that focusses the reader�s attention, not on what�s in the lines, but what�s beyond them. The voice of Broughton invites the reader in, and it is through his precise prose that the reader is continually surprised and intrigued. This is a voice that will endure." (Michael Winter)
Excerpt from A Cassette Rewinding...
�The weather was disintegrating in a most ingenious way. At times it almost seemed to be thinking; the wind dying down just enough for him to relax and then returning to whip him headlong into the side of the boat. The Malevolent Houghton had predicted this. If the parrot�s calculations continued to hold, they�d be at the edge, at vindication, in hours.�
418pp, 140mm x 190mm
softcover (fiction)
$24.95 (Can), $16.95 (US)
ISBN: 0-90210-90-9