David Gaffney – författare

Longlisted for The Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2024The countryside – what is it for? A paradise on earth where you can relax and get creative? Or an outdoor wool factory where every other house is an Airbnb and there are fewer trees than Camden. In his new collection of short stories David Gaffney explores the theme of town versus country through a number of different lenses, including his own experience of being brought up in west Cumbria then moving to Manchester. A creative residency on the coast of Scotland becomes weirder and weirder in “The Retreat”; ‘I’ve always had the feeling that the countryside has something against me and that one day it will take its revenge.’ In “The Table”, a recluse in Penrith uses mid-century furniture to lure city dwellers into a world of ‘depressed farmers with shotguns and bottomless pits of slurry that will swallow you so hard you'll never be seen again. And in “The Garages” the pressure of city living forces a man to become oddly obsessed with empty spaces. Often funny, often haunting, often profound, Gaffney uses dark humour and surreal characters to demonstrate a deep understanding of how places, urban or rural, can shape, influence and sometimes distort our lives. ‘People who like the countryside tend to believe in things that aren’t really there,’ says a character in “The Country Pub”. These are indeed stories about things that aren’t really there, and this is why they resonate with you long after you have stopped reading.

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.

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.

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.