Sawn-off Tales (Salt Modern Fiction)
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Review
Funny, pointed, and sometimes even disturbing, Gaffney’s stories deserve to be read. (Jim Burns Ambit )
This book will knock you out. Packed with emotion, annoyance, and social science fiction, it’s a testament to imagination and the skill of illustrating it. (Harlan Levey Modart Magazine )
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 )
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 )
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 )
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 )
Sawn-Off Tales is an original collection, one that bravely attempts to present modern life in the way that we ourselves experience it – as a series small, occasionally meaningless snapshots, which build to create a rich complexity. (Lucy Wood Transition Tradition )
This book will knock you out. Packed with emotion, annoyance, and social science fiction, it’s a testament to imagination and the skill of illustrating it. (Harlan Levey Modart Magazine )
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 )
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 )
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 )
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 )
Sawn-Off Tales is an original collection, one that bravely attempts to present modern life in the way that we ourselves experience it – as a series small, occasionally meaningless snapshots, which build to create a rich complexity. (Lucy Wood Transition Tradition )
The Guardian, December 2, 2006
sad, funny fables recalling evanescent moments of connection and
happiness. 150 words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than some novels
happiness. 150 words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than some novels
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
These beautiful stories crafted in so few words reflect the unique writing skills of this author.Revealing, hilarious and entertaining, they add so much to the rich genre of short stories and to the other collections like Usurper and Other Stories, A twist in the Tale, Anton Chekov's, other short stories that have made my day. I will always watch out for more David Gaffney stories.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
We read this for our book club. We wanted something short because one member has new babies and falls asleep, so needs short works!
We LOVED it. The stories are something like haikus, densely packed poems to play with and open up in your imagination.
I can't recommend them highly enough.
We LOVED it. The stories are something like haikus, densely packed poems to play with and open up in your imagination.
I can't recommend them highly enough.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is a trailblazer, surely a one-off, something truly unique. Just 116 pages long, containing as many as 58 (yes, 58) short stories in all, none of which is longer than 300 words or so (some are even shorter), it is nonetheless a masterpiece. I was going to say "a masterpiece of its kind" except that this book has no kith or kin. And that's a lie. Because there are created things it reminds me of - it recalls for me the pithiness and truth of Japanese haiku perhaps, but not prose. And yet, as prose,it is totally satisfying. Yet weird.
Imagine, if you will, that Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (and his other New Yorkers) refuse to remain silent and speak up for a change - and speak in English accents (for God's sake!)and ship out of New York to make landfall in English places. And then imagine, too, that Ray Bradbury is commissioned to write the script with his sci-fi head in gear.
Well, that's David Gaffney and that's SAWN-OFF TALES.
It's odd-ball, it's cranky; it's whimsical and inventive and frightening. It's appalling and enthralling too. It's hilariously funny. It's wonderful gear, a really refreshing change: it's fiction as fiction should be - heading out into the great creative unknown, and devil take the hindmost. And truth to tell, I know far more Christmas stockings that would cheerfully gobble this book up in preference to the latest Dean Koontz or John Grisham.
Imagine, if you will, that Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (and his other New Yorkers) refuse to remain silent and speak up for a change - and speak in English accents (for God's sake!)and ship out of New York to make landfall in English places. And then imagine, too, that Ray Bradbury is commissioned to write the script with his sci-fi head in gear.
Well, that's David Gaffney and that's SAWN-OFF TALES.
It's odd-ball, it's cranky; it's whimsical and inventive and frightening. It's appalling and enthralling too. It's hilariously funny. It's wonderful gear, a really refreshing change: it's fiction as fiction should be - heading out into the great creative unknown, and devil take the hindmost. And truth to tell, I know far more Christmas stockings that would cheerfully gobble this book up in preference to the latest Dean Koontz or John Grisham.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Vignette? Vignette anyone?
I stumbled across this book when I read something by the author on the Shortbread short story website. It was a lucky little find too. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Cuban Heel
Timely, good condition good price
The book arrived in a short space of time, it was in an excellent condition and the price was reasonable.
Published 18 months ago by Lima
Original with a twist in the tale
Sawn Off Tales appear to be short stories which offer a form of snapshot. However as the title of the collection suggests, rather than giving the reader a posed and contrived... Read more
Published on 12 May 2010 by Laura E. Bean
Slow motion robot dancing, acupuncture in a blur
Lean, sinewy, rugged, economic to the point of angularity, Gaffney's stories compress emotion like a recycler jumping on cardboard boxes. Read more
Published on 18 Jun 2007 by sean miller
excellent dip in dip out read
very amusing entertaining book what an ideal xmas gift
Published on 25 Sep 2006 by Mrs. M. P. Kelly
Don't put this down
I read this collection of tales and laughed out loud to several of them (and guiltily laughed in private to the others). Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2006 by A. Donnellan
Tender, biting, baffling
Tender, biting, sometimes baffling, Gaffney's precision-engineered slivers of fiction slip inside you like a bouncy song off a bad advert. Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2006 by Rob O'Brian
Everyone needs this!
In this set of new ultra short stories David Gaffney offers a new take on everything from aching lovers, redundant factory workers, tragic bedsits, and ham-handed courtships. Read more
Published on 3 Sep 2006 by R. Allan
A spoonful weighs a ton
Gaffney's stories get under your skin, up your nose and, like literary ferrets, down your trousers. The plots are uncanny, often surreal; a man falls out with his barber over a... Read more
Published on 2 Sep 2006 by Hannah F
funny, cool, urgent
I'd read many of David's stories on the web and in magazines and was looking forward to seeing them collected together in one volume like this. I wasn't disappointed. Read more
Published on 1 Sep 2006 by debbie
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