More Sawn-Off Tales
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Description
In stories that are laugh out loud funny, cringingly weird and desperately sad., Gaffney introduces the possibility of momentary actions that change everything; a swimming man sees a hundred glass eyes at the bottom of a river; a broken vase causes a couple to re-examine their relationship with the universe; a zoo with only three animals makes a man reconsider his relationship to his surrounding; and a comedian decides to expresses himself through the medium of smell.
Relationships begin, stutter, then crash to earth, each mundane transaction peeling away the everyday to reveal a canyon of emotion.
Gaffney's characters are awkward, often disconnected, yet they are also profoundly sympathetic. With great empathy and generosity he reveals the idiosyncrasies, vulnerability, yearning, and twisted systems that governs our lives. In More Sawn-off Tales David Gaffney creates a deliriously lonely, yet lovely universe where strangers hand you their watch and an estranged couple try to communicate through paint colour. An expert miniaturist with the ability to stuff an elephant inside a flea without the insect noticing, Gaffney is like David Shrigley meets Curb Your Enthusiasm.
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Relationships begin, stutter, then crash to earth, each mundane transaction peeling away the everyday to reveal a canyon of emotion.
Gaffney's characters are awkward, often disconnected, yet they are also profoundly sympathetic. With great empathy and generosity he reveals the idiosyncrasies, vulnerability, yearning, and twisted systems that governs our lives. In More Sawn-off Tales David Gaffney creates a deliriously lonely, yet lovely universe where strangers hand you their watch and an estranged couple try to communicate through paint colour. An expert miniaturist with the ability to stuff an elephant inside a flea without the insect noticing, Gaffney is like David Shrigley meets Curb Your Enthusiasm.
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Product details
- Hardback | 160 pages
- 110 x 178 x 17mm | 191.87g
- 15 May 2013
- Salt Publishing
- Cambridge, United Kingdom
- English
- UK ed.
- No
- 1907773436
- 9781907773433
- 2,104,908
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Passing Place
Nerves
Hidden Obvious Typical
It Happens Inside
Oasis Leisure Lounge
Bleached Lichen Number Four
The Clever People Who Can't Do Anything Useful
Mo's Feet
The Zoo With Three Animals
Acceptable for Men to Like
Something Happened Here
Reekers
Functional Market Area
More Men Will Come
The Homes of Others
It's All in Storage
Everything's West of Something
The Three Rooms In Valerie's Head
The Big Pub
The Joke About Todd Pokato
Lifting and Handling the Truth
The Building With the Hole
The Proper Care of Surfaces
The Receipt
The Smell Comedian
Get the Ball and Give It to Bobby Moore
The Gypsy in Me
New Audiences
The Power of Millions
Boy You Turn Me
It Doesn't Really Matter If Things Die Out
Taped Over
Thrill Me Slowly
The Listed Bridge
The Good Machines
Happy Birthday, Hee Hee
The Scientific Explanation for Faraway Eyes
Can You Feel the Waves?
Let's See What Rachel's Been Up To
Nothing Can Hurt Me Now
Nineteen-Eighties Cavalier
The Man Who Was Always There But Never Said Anything
Blood in Flight
Lag Phase
Buy Yourself a Cheap Tray
Skewness
For The Lady
Other People's Worlds
Inches From What You Want
Uncle Leonard
The Bad Psychiatrists
This Is Your Brain On Drugs
Doll Parts
The Woman With the Four Planks of Wood
Loss Function
The Bear's Head
Like a Town
The Mousemats Say Innovate Or Die
Normal Hours
Private View
Dip Finish
DJ Stinger and the Ghost Alpcaca
Effective Calming Measures
How to Get Around in the Sky
As If You Are There
Talking to the Budgerigar
The Happy Spore
The Leaves Are Really Something Else
The Periphery is Everywhere
The Underpass
Two Columns
Eat Less Pastry
A Dress Code For Modern Musicians
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Passing Place
Nerves
Hidden Obvious Typical
It Happens Inside
Oasis Leisure Lounge
Bleached Lichen Number Four
The Clever People Who Can't Do Anything Useful
Mo's Feet
The Zoo With Three Animals
Acceptable for Men to Like
Something Happened Here
Reekers
Functional Market Area
More Men Will Come
The Homes of Others
It's All in Storage
Everything's West of Something
The Three Rooms In Valerie's Head
The Big Pub
The Joke About Todd Pokato
Lifting and Handling the Truth
The Building With the Hole
The Proper Care of Surfaces
The Receipt
The Smell Comedian
Get the Ball and Give It to Bobby Moore
The Gypsy in Me
New Audiences
The Power of Millions
Boy You Turn Me
It Doesn't Really Matter If Things Die Out
Taped Over
Thrill Me Slowly
The Listed Bridge
The Good Machines
Happy Birthday, Hee Hee
The Scientific Explanation for Faraway Eyes
Can You Feel the Waves?
Let's See What Rachel's Been Up To
Nothing Can Hurt Me Now
Nineteen-Eighties Cavalier
The Man Who Was Always There But Never Said Anything
Blood in Flight
Lag Phase
Buy Yourself a Cheap Tray
Skewness
For The Lady
Other People's Worlds
Inches From What You Want
Uncle Leonard
The Bad Psychiatrists
This Is Your Brain On Drugs
Doll Parts
The Woman With the Four Planks of Wood
Loss Function
The Bear's Head
Like a Town
The Mousemats Say Innovate Or Die
Normal Hours
Private View
Dip Finish
DJ Stinger and the Ghost Alpcaca
Effective Calming Measures
How to Get Around in the Sky
As If You Are There
Talking to the Budgerigar
The Happy Spore
The Leaves Are Really Something Else
The Periphery is Everywhere
The Underpass
Two Columns
Eat Less Pastry
A Dress Code For Modern Musicians
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Review quote
In More Sawn-Off Tales Gaffney demonstrates his mastery over flash fiction, as he evokes sadness and humour in equal measure through the often tragic but fully formed characters in 70-plus stories. * The Big Issue * Bleached Lichen Number Four is one of the most heart-wrenching stories of the collection, and depicts a man who attempts to communicate to his ex-girlfriend through the colour of her favourite paint. It, like many others in this fantastic collection, is a clever and poignant exploration of what it takes to be connected to another.
With More Sawn Off Tales, Gaffney has created very short stories that offer full, vivid and complete worlds for the reader to inhabit, and once inside they won't want to leave. -- Kylie Grant * The List * More Sawn-Off Tales is rich with phrases which will stick in the reader's memory (`I keep a ball of tissue under my armpit and drop shreds of it into her food to keep her loyal') and ideas which are ripe for expansion into longer stories, such as the psychiatrists who organise arts activities for their manic patients so that they can burgle their houses. * Workshy Fop * Utterly brilliant. Hilariously demented and wonderfully succinct. David Gaffney's Sawn-Off Tales are little McNuggets of pure gold. This is writing at its best. -- Graham Rawle Evanescent moments of connection and happiness. One hundred and fifty words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than novels by a good many others. -- Nicholas Clee * The Guardian * Loaded with potent charges, insidious and cumulative in their effects, in Gaffney's fiction thoughts take physical form, and the material world has a surreal vitality. The stories are sometimes haunting, and sometimes comic. * Times Literary Supplement *
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With More Sawn Off Tales, Gaffney has created very short stories that offer full, vivid and complete worlds for the reader to inhabit, and once inside they won't want to leave. -- Kylie Grant * The List * More Sawn-Off Tales is rich with phrases which will stick in the reader's memory (`I keep a ball of tissue under my armpit and drop shreds of it into her food to keep her loyal') and ideas which are ripe for expansion into longer stories, such as the psychiatrists who organise arts activities for their manic patients so that they can burgle their houses. * Workshy Fop * Utterly brilliant. Hilariously demented and wonderfully succinct. David Gaffney's Sawn-Off Tales are little McNuggets of pure gold. This is writing at its best. -- Graham Rawle Evanescent moments of connection and happiness. One hundred and fifty words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than novels by a good many others. -- Nicholas Clee * The Guardian * Loaded with potent charges, insidious and cumulative in their effects, in Gaffney's fiction thoughts take physical form, and the material world has a surreal vitality. The stories are sometimes haunting, and sometimes comic. * Times Literary Supplement *
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About David Gaffney
David Gaffney lives in Manchester. He is the author of several books including Sawn-Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), Never Never (2008), The Half-Life of Songs (2010) and More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). He has written articles for the Guardian, Sunday Times, Financial Times and Prospect, and his new novel, All The Places I've Ever Lived, is due out in spring 2017. See www.davidgaffney.org.
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