Aromabingo builds on the critical success of David Gaffney’s 2006 collection Sawn-off Tales, offering yet more of Gaffney’s weird and edgy ultra-shorts, plus several longer works, so you can spend even more time inside the baffling, hilarious and sometimes moving world of a David Gaffney story. Think Magnus Mills mashed with the League of Gentlemen with a jolt of Mark E. Smithery for grit, and you’re nearly there. Though many of his stories are shorter than a Napalm Death snarl, these precision-engineered slivers of fiction leave you with the dying chords of a symphony. They are about the small people, the tiny Tardis folk with cathedrals inside them, creeping by unnoticed. These tales will have you laughing like at a Tommy Cooper video though there’s something hideous gnawing at the door to get in. Be careful, a spoonful weighs a ton.
Table of Contents:
- 1. 45 REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE:
- Art Movement
- The Kids from Film Noir
- Pretty, Ain’t It?
- All Mod Cons
- Sniffin’ Glue
- Still in Box
- Speaking in Pantone
- Die like a Rock
- Great Inventions # 1
- Lucky Winner
- A Good Deal
- Through the Medium of Modern Dance
- Great Inventions # 2
- Smaller than One Eightieth the Diameter of a Human Hair
- Blurred Girls
- The Secret Pictures of David Cameron
- The Newt Lady’s Dead Now
- The Life of Riley
- You’ve Chosen to be Excited
- Great Inventions # 3
- Are We Romping Now?
- Clown-Time is Over
- The Accused Made Spider Furniture
- Container Driver
- Using the Facilities
- When Chairs Attack
- Shooting Lulu
- A Feel for Format
- Grockel Bashing
- Cleaning up New York
- Aromabingo
- 2. TWELVE-INCH SINGLES:
- The Happiness Well
- Last Chance to Turn Around
- You and You Alone
- Only the Stones Remain
- In the Days Before Trickery
- The Nineteen Seventy-Six Trouser Famine
- Who reads this story will not sin
- What Would Bill Hicks Do?
- Mean Picking
- The Last Northerner
- 3. LONG PLAYERS:
- This is About Dixie
- Finding Skerryvore
- Does Anyone Care for You on a Regular Basis?
- Special Pudding
- Guided by Voices
- Gossamer
- 4. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About the Author :
David Gaffney comes from Cleator Moor in West Cumbria, and now lives in Manchester. He is the author of three critically acclaimed short story collections - Sawn-off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007) and The Half-life Of Songs (2010) - and the novel Never Never (2008). He has written articles for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Financial Times and Prospect magazine
Review :
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.
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.
Funny, pointed, and sometimes even disturbing, Gaffney’s stories deserve to be read.
Gaffney’s book will knock you out. Packed with emotion, annoyance, and social science fiction, its a testament to imagination and the skill of illustrating it.
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. There’s a parochial quality to this work that gives off a humble warm glow. Set in Woolworths, barber shops, and offices, Gaffney looks at relationships and his characters are all a little lost and tinged with pathos but surreally optimistic. Each story has a quirky end which make you wish Gaffney was allowed 15 minutes of time with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant to make his vision come to life.
Reality becomes dislocated and strange and words and phrases acquire a compelling importance in these sad, funny fables. They recall evanescent moments of connection and happiness. One hundred and fifty words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than novels by a good many others.
