More sawn-off tales - David Gaffney

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.

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.

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.

Evanescent moments of connection and happiness. One hundred and fifty words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than novels by a good many others.

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.

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.

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.

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.