Fulcrum
by Laith Antoiner
Fifteen year old Rodney returns from school to find his home empty and his parents gone. Left only with a mattress, his record collection, a wilted poster of Che Guevara, and his catalogue of graphic novels, Rodney disguises the situation until a wrong number triggers his eventual breakdown, in the throes of which he discovers that his parents have a history of spontaneously abandoning their children which predates Rodney�s birth.
Told with a slight stutter and the eschewed values of an adolescent, Fulcrum is at once poignant and amusing.
Laith Antoiner was raised in Corner Brook, Newfoundland where he was annually tempted to jump the ice flows. He now lives in St. John�s, where he teaches photography to high school know-it-alls.
"A dark and witty tale with a guilty capacity to make us laugh... Antoiner weaves this story together with deft prose, driving us onward through an unlikely adventure" (Arssal Shaima, Toronto Arts Review)
"What Antoiner manages to do in this story is nothing short of amazing; a portrait of something horrid and obscene becomes triumphant and hopeful, without dragging us through an inch of the melodramatic... a victory." (Jenna Kirkpatrick, St. Paul Examiner)
"The unexpected greets us with a knowing smile. Fulcrum expertly explores the unimaginable." (Forrest Hangman, The Hartford Chronicle)
Excerpt from Fulcrum
�He stood in the shower and turned the hot on all the way. He held his arms close and crossed against his bare chest. The water hit his arms and it was so
hot, he thought at first it was cold and he kept his eye�s shut so tight he almost couldn�t remember where he was. He turned his back to the showerhead and the water hit his back with a hollow pound. He opened his eyes a little and looked at his arms still across his chest. His forearms were a healthy shade of pink, his back stung. He let his head fall back and the water pound his forehead, eyes, mouth. He stood there for a while feeling the water as it rushed through his hair, trickled down the front of his body, the surge of water off his elbows. The breeze from the open bathroom window pushing the shower curtain against his body.�
356 pp, 140 x 215 mm
softcover (fiction)
$18.95 (Can), $13.95 (US)
ISBN:0-90210-10-2