reviews of aromabingo
The Short Review
Structured sublimely into three parts, 45 Revolutions per Minute, Twelve-inch Singles and Long-Players, with dozens of references to the time-emaciating music of our northern souls, the book gains momentum, like an old LP does. With hiccups and stutters, moments of abject confusion or unusual clarity or remote, unreal sadness. When we reach the Long Players we’re ready for crescendos, the pace and mood heightens, and the pieces take off. Gaffney has a knack of producing inner qualms in a reader so that he operates almost as a keen opponent as much as the story’s creator. And the humour is as black as only northerners know how, or feel the right to be offended by. The Story Art Movement is one of the most honestly tender and evocative pieces of flash fiction I have read in ages. I could almost feel the female character’s hair brushing my own face as I read. Aromabingo is a triumph of the blurring of literary boundaries. Popular ideas, the love of stories, contemporary culture invited by unruly media… rubbing up against a purely anarchic desire to agitate the norm and our political fops and their counter-balances; obliterating the literary purpose with a dose of unabashed comic bravura and honouring British writing with the awkward, self-conscious, yet jagged aplomb it so deservedly needs.
Bookmunch
In David Gaffney’s world, kids are raised film noir, cat hit men suffer attacks of nerves, and prescription windscreens, defective brain implants and photographs of blurred girls prove the undoing of relationships. Offbeat, unsettling and yet frequently hilarious, Aromabingo is a solid step on from the accomplished Sawn-Off Tales and proof that David Gaffney is one of those names to watch.
Don’t Magazine
Brilliantly observed vignettes of modern life that reveal an acute sense of the absurd. Gaffney’s stories are funny, but often darkly so, playing as they do with our insecurities and deferred hopes in settings that, no matter how implausible, are immediately recognisable. That he does it so vividly and in so few words should commend him to a time poor generation that consumes food and culture on the go. These are finely cut gems, stories that will fill and enrich time between places, making the gaps that puncture our schedules more important that the things they bookend.
Arts At The Heart magazine
Aromabingo packs a similar punch to the critically acclaimed Sawn-off Tales, full of surreal tales and flights of fancy. Each story is like a small neat parcel and you just want to keep on opening them. Often ultra short (with most observations being just a page long), the book is compulsive, addictive and you want to read just one more – so you stay up and finish the whole thing in one sitting. This is compelling reading challenging the mind, imagination and perception –often humorous, sometimes disturbing, but never disappointing. Think League Of Gentlemen or Flann O’Brien or even The Mighty Boosh – these stories are like fireworks waiting to go off, leaving you with a new urban myth – weird, comic and often disturbingly true.
Bob Magazine
David Gaffney isn’t in the habit of wasting words. His nano stories rarely stretch their legs beyond the 150-word mark, but they cover so much emotional ground, they’re almost disorientating. They’re addictive too. Like literary cocaine, you’ll want another quick line.
Fee Plumley, thephonebookltd
David's stories are succinct in length and vast in imagination, ranging from a Victorian Child bought from a website, to Pete Doherty split in half and immersed in formaldehyde having left his remains to "Art". Wit and talent shine through and it's always a real treat to see the world through David Gaffney’s eyes.
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Structured sublimely into three parts, 45 Revolutions per Minute, Twelve-inch Singles and Long-Players, with dozens of references to the time-emaciating music of our northern souls, the book gains momentum, like an old LP does. With hiccups and stutters, moments of abject confusion or unusual clarity or remote, unreal sadness. When we reach the Long Players we’re ready for crescendos, the pace and mood heightens, and the pieces take off. Gaffney has a knack of producing inner qualms in a reader so that he operates almost as a keen opponent as much as the story’s creator. And the humour is as black as only northerners know how, or feel the right to be offended by. The Story Art Movement is one of the most honestly tender and evocative pieces of flash fiction I have read in ages. I could almost feel the female character’s hair brushing my own face as I read. Aromabingo is a triumph of the blurring of literary boundaries. Popular ideas, the love of stories, contemporary culture invited by unruly media… rubbing up against a purely anarchic desire to agitate the norm and our political fops and their counter-balances; obliterating the literary purpose with a dose of unabashed comic bravura and honouring British writing with the awkward, self-conscious, yet jagged aplomb it so deservedly needs.
Bookmunch
In David Gaffney’s world, kids are raised film noir, cat hit men suffer attacks of nerves, and prescription windscreens, defective brain implants and photographs of blurred girls prove the undoing of relationships. Offbeat, unsettling and yet frequently hilarious, Aromabingo is a solid step on from the accomplished Sawn-Off Tales and proof that David Gaffney is one of those names to watch.
Don’t Magazine
Brilliantly observed vignettes of modern life that reveal an acute sense of the absurd. Gaffney’s stories are funny, but often darkly so, playing as they do with our insecurities and deferred hopes in settings that, no matter how implausible, are immediately recognisable. That he does it so vividly and in so few words should commend him to a time poor generation that consumes food and culture on the go. These are finely cut gems, stories that will fill and enrich time between places, making the gaps that puncture our schedules more important that the things they bookend.
Arts At The Heart magazine
Aromabingo packs a similar punch to the critically acclaimed Sawn-off Tales, full of surreal tales and flights of fancy. Each story is like a small neat parcel and you just want to keep on opening them. Often ultra short (with most observations being just a page long), the book is compulsive, addictive and you want to read just one more – so you stay up and finish the whole thing in one sitting. This is compelling reading challenging the mind, imagination and perception –often humorous, sometimes disturbing, but never disappointing. Think League Of Gentlemen or Flann O’Brien or even The Mighty Boosh – these stories are like fireworks waiting to go off, leaving you with a new urban myth – weird, comic and often disturbingly true.
Bob Magazine
David Gaffney isn’t in the habit of wasting words. His nano stories rarely stretch their legs beyond the 150-word mark, but they cover so much emotional ground, they’re almost disorientating. They’re addictive too. Like literary cocaine, you’ll want another quick line.
Fee Plumley, thephonebookltd
David's stories are succinct in length and vast in imagination, ranging from a Victorian Child bought from a website, to Pete Doherty split in half and immersed in formaldehyde having left his remains to "Art". Wit and talent shine through and it's always a real treat to see the world through David Gaffney’s eyes.
< Back
Home