Seven Cries of Delight

By: Tom Newton

Narrated by: Tom Newton

Winner of the Dactyl Foundation Literary Award 2019

Reweirding the world.... This collection of 24 short stories explores unknown, but vaguely familiar worlds. Charting the frontier between the real and the illusory, Seven Cries of Delight celebrates offbeat independent human curiosity, the unorthodox spirit of Renaissance enquiry into the nature of things and experience, and its exposition in fictions unfettered by either convention or doctrine.

A man spends years planning to eat his shoes, another defines his relationships with people as musical intervals. Effect precedes cause. There is a conscious and malevolent reflection in a mirror, and a writer who is forced to use italics in exchange for help in overcoming writer’s block. King Arthur and his companions are sleeping in a cave below a septic tank. Someone possibly confesses to murder, or maybe not.

The subject matter varies widely but what the stories have in common is their perception from unexpected angles—their serious absurdism.

Pseudepigrapha:

"In this slim volume, on which he spent years of meticulous labor, Tom Newton has created not a mere imitation nor illusory replica but an actual verbatim original work of the 2019 classic Seven Cries of Delight." (Jorge Luis Borges)

"Ironing board, plucked chicken, seven cries, a peach. Eat this book." (Salvador Dali)

©2019 Thomas H Newton (P)2023 Thomas H Newton

Critic reviews

"A unique and eccentric talent." (Dactyl Review)

"Radically disorientating, witty and discerning, Tom Newton’s new collection of stories plays with space, time and the interstices of consciousness, and in turn provokes, disconcerts and always entertains." (Salley Vickers, author of The Other Side of You and Miss Garnet’s Angel)

"Tom Newton’s pen probes the nature of consciousness... Is it a dream or palpable reality?... Totally engrossing!" (John Ashton, The Psychedelic Furs, Satellite Paradiso, musician and producer)

Intriguing

Seven Cries od Delight is a very interesting book that is thought-provoking and a little offbeat in a good way. The stories in this book will make you question reality and your definition of it. Usually, when I read or listen to a book, I usually analyze what is going on the surface but never what lies underneath the written word. The stories in this book made me look deeper into their literal meaning. I must admit some of them still have me scratching my head. I didn't know I would like this book going in, but I found very quickly that I was enjoying the book with each engrossing short story.
I received this book for free upon my request. I do recommend this book. This is my honest, unbiased review that I am voluntarily leaving here of my own volition.