Search for a word or phrase in this book …

Biographical note:  David Gaffney was born in West Cumbria, studied in Birmingham and now lives in Manchester. He has worked as an English teacher, a film studies lecturer, a holiday camp entertainer, a medical records clerk, a pub pianist, a debt counsellor in Moss Side, a legal consultant in Liverpool, and now works for a shadowy government organisation. His stories have been published in Ambit, The Illustrated Ape, and The Mix.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844712922
ISBN-10:  1844712923
ISBN-13:  9781844712922
Author:  David Gaffney
Title:  Sawn-Off Tales
Series:  Salt Modern Fiction
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  FNB
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Sep-06
Extent:  128pp
Height:  203 mm
Width:  127 mm
Thickness:  9 mm
Weight:  204 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  David Gaffney’s compact, surreal tales are filled with poignancy and wit. Each story goes off like a tiny depth charge in the mind, leaving you with the trace memory of some new urban myth — comic, absurd and disturbingly true.

Meet the author :  

Podcasts

Play Happy Place (860 KB)


Play Last to Know (960 KB)


Play Life Just Bounces (1.1 MB)


Play Mask (1.1 MB)


Play Potato Smiles (920 KB)


Play Some Call it Loungecore (1 MB)


Play The Way You Say “Park” (920 KB)


Play The World Won’t Listen (928 KB)


Play Your Name in Weetos (892 KB)

Table of contents:
Your Name in Weetos
The Lost Language of Hairgrips
Last to Know
Flying Lessons with Gary Numan
Intimate Zone
Happy Place
Where We Left Off
You Know, Quiet
‘Uchafu’
What You Know is There
Pets
Killer Lines
Click
Into the World
Heavy Java Guy
She’s Really Alt-Country
Smells Like
Some Call it Loungecore
Special Interest
We Are the Robots
Little Jan
A Good System
We Like it Here
No Turning
Last Chance to Turn Around
Mask
The Kids Are All Right
Tasting Notes
Wednesday Night’s Alright for Fighting
Contact Time
Enclosures
New Best Friend
Potato Smiles
Shop Talk
Until You are Happy
Floydy
The Habits of Unstoppable People
The Way you Say ‘Park’
Lady Pleaser
First Out
Light Lunch
With Tongues
On This Very Special Day
Cica Lights
The World Won’t Listen
Smack
End of Line
Server Farmer
Kick inside
Pop-Tarts
The Funny Way I Feel Inside
The Heartless Chain
The Man Whose Head Expanded
A Personal Message
Doctor Logic
Dead Star
Do You Know Where I Am?
Life Just Bounces

View excerpt as PDF:

Click here to view a sample (464 KB)

Excerpt from book: 

Little Jan

I was the only Janet in the office until she arrived but there was no problem until one day I asked Harriet for the long stapler and she said she’d given it to Little Jan.

Little Jan. She wasn’t particularly little and I’m not especially big. I didn’t want to be known as Big Jan, like some bull dyke prisoner. Harriet tried to reassure me; the new Janet was Little Jan but I would always be Jan. But they might as well write fat cow on my forehead for all the difference that made. So–called Little Jan is a 12 at least, and not TopShop, more like Marks.

So whilst recovering the long stapler I told Jan all about fast–track promotion in this place, the people to influence, and how to do it.

Now I’m still Jan but she’s known as Stockroom Jan and she’s off long–term with stress.

Unpublished endorsement :  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

Unpublished endorsement :  David Gaffney writes truly 21st century stories for a fragmented and fragmenting world; they’re short, snappy and utterly addictive and they should be required reading for anybody trying to make sense of Britain in 2006; or for anybody in a bus queue with five minutes to spare.

Ian McMillan

Review quote:  Funny, pointed, and sometimes even disturbing, Gaffney’s stories deserve to be read.

Jim Burns
Ambit

Review quote:  This book will knock you out. Packed with emotion, annoyance, and social science fiction, its a testament to imagination and the skill of illustrating it.

Harlan Levey
MODART

Review quote:  David Gaffney is an evolution, a moment in time to be lavished with a literary eye, to be goggled with a mind broad and open enough to look and look anew. Each snippet disturbingly captures everyday life in superbly unique fashion. What a stunning collection.

Eugen M. Bacon
TCM

Review quote:  Gaffney has produced the kind of book that makes you wish you spent more time locked in your imagination and less time dismissing irreverent thoughts.

Lianne Steinberg
The Big Issue

Review quote:  Almost all the 58 stories in David Gaffney's collection are shorter than this review. Reality becomes dislocated and strange; words and phrases acquire a compelling importance … One hundred and fifty words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than novels by a good many others.

Nicholas Clee
The Guardian

Review quote:  Exceptional and well deserving of the hardcover slapped around them…witty, clever and poignant Gaffney's micro fictions work as funny routines, moving insights and illuminating character sketches, often all at the same time.

Nicholas Royle
Time Out