‘Loaded with potent charges, insidious and cumulative in their effects, the stories are sometimes haunting, sometimes comic.' The Times Literary Supplement
'Sad, funny fables recalling evanescent moments of connection and happiness. One hundred and fifty words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than novels by a good many others.' The Guardian
'A ruthless eye and pitch-black humour.' The Observer
'It would be hard to imagine a book that scored a more penetrating bull’s-eye on the target of the moment.' The Independent
‘Witty, clever and poignant, Gaffney's micro fictions work as funny routines, moving insights and illuminating character sketches, often all at the same time.’ Time Out
'David Gaffney’s stories are enchantingly strange, pleasingly perverse, fabulously entertaining and highly recommended.' Alison Moore
“The main character in The Garages from Concrete Fields, lives alone in Ian Curtis’s House in Macclesfield, and becomes intrigued to find out why a local man is obsessed with owning the entire row of nearby garages. His ultimate discovery is something unexpectedly thought-provoking and moving.” Carol Morley, The Guardian
"I can think of few things more delightful than reading David Gaffney's dark, funny, tiny, enormous stories riffing on the idea, the dream, the tales of whales. As with everything Gaffney creates, Whale is about whales and not about whales; it's about life, death, loss, grief, work, love, connection. And boots. It is, as the author himself tells us in The Metaphor on the Beach in case we think we have cleverly figured it out, a metaphor. I also learned a lot about whales, some of which might actually be true." Tania Hershman
“In the beautiful stories in Whale, David Gaffney asks what it means when a whale washes up on a northern-English beach. The whale, in all its meatiness and mass, is shockingly present, but Gaffney movingly explores how the whale comes to represent the dreams, griefs and yearnings of those drawn to the mystery and sadness of its beaching. Playful, vividly unexpected, funny, these are short, sharp stories that stick deep in the heart and the mind and won’t be shaken out.” Jacob Polley
“This new collection contains some of David Gaffney’s best work and shows him experimenting in different ways. A table appears as a character and a hand starts talking to a head in another. At times the reader could be in Nikolai Gogol’s St. Petersburg or in pursuit of Ivor Cutler’s berserk leg. Some of the stories close in a puzzle, like Robbe-Grillet’s beach figures in “The Strand”, in a kind of endless loop. This is what the stories excel in, the play within and between genres, the disorientation of the reader.” Richard Clegg
“Utterly moving.” Des Lewis
‘A twisted and darkly funny neo-noir with real propulsive energy that produces surprises on nearly every page.’ Stephen May
' Ingenious, idiosyncratic and unnerving.' Luke Brown
'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.’ Graham Rawle
"David Gaffney is, I think, one of very few contemporary British Writers who have mastered the very short form" Nicholas Royle
"Great read, these twisted wee tales," Johnny Vegas
‘elliptical, sharp, witty and dazzling, written with a poet’s eye for detail and a novelist’s appreciation of human faults and foibles.’ Jenn Ashworth
‘Gaffney’s latest is a masterful taster menu, every mouthful wickedly inventive and deliciously absurd. Brilliant.’ Adam Marek
'Sharp, poignant, surreal, lyrical and very, very funny, the collection reveals intense knowledge and control of the form, along with a desire to push the boundaries in every direction’ Emma Jane Unsworth
"Gaffney’s arresting series of short stories Sawn-off Tales seems to operate much as Surrealist paintings do: able to strike with depth through peculiar arrangements of thoughts and ideas. Madly imaginative " The Skinny
'Cleverly written, great characters' Glyn Dillon
"Multilayered, thoughtful, funny and strange' John Allison
Gaffney’s writing has the rare gift of being clever, playful, and readable all at once. Michael Farraday
"Full of twists and turns, genre-playfulness and sharp observations, it all takes place in actually-existing concrete landscapes of marginalisation, disconnection and dereliction…rather more grungily quotidian and irreal-adjacent than anything in Ballard – closer, perhaps, to M. John Harrison or Ramsey Campbell." Mark Bould
"David Gaffney has dealt the cards with fiendish dexterity, displaying a fresh, individual energy in its versatile mix of the playful and the serious, freely shuffling the actual with the imagined, that makes it pleasurable, compulsive reading. Here is a gift that keeps on giving till the last page. Buy it, read it, enjoy. " Basil Ransome-Davies
"Ingenious, poignant romances open larger vistas where music and imagination offer wit and insight beyond the grayness of daily life." — Library Journal
"…snortingly funny with a robust and off-kilter imagination..these short tales almost always act like riddles, sending the reader back to the beginning to figure out what makes the characters behave that way. " - Etelka Lehoczky for NPR books
"It's poetic, mischievous, packed with wit and artistry, and you’ll want to re-read it – possibly as soon as you’ve finished." - Slings and Arrows
Funny, poignant, surreal and still warmly emotional and human — a delight to read." — Forbidden Planet
"Funny and weird... Valerie exhumes her love life by hanging out with all of the guys that didn’t work out, and the one that might still." — Barnes & Noble
“Exquisitely structured for maximum satisfaction and laugh-out-loud comedy… delicious.” — Page 45
"strangely funny, and intensely quirky….dealing with issues of loneliness and isolation, relationships, and memory, it all builds up to something that synthesizes art and ideas, telling of a life in one woman’s head, seemingly trapped in the mistakes of the past." Comicon
"A darkly beautiful meditation on obsession & memory" _ Richard Bruton
“Exquisitely structured for maximum satisfaction and laugh-out-loud comedy” — Page 45
"RIVERS is some kind of national treasure. One of our February Books of the Month, it's a breezy, funny, compelling story about a group of utterly real, kitchen sink characters in the UK who’re all fully realised as completely different characters - to the point where it feels like they could walk right off the page - who all have an odd connection. What follows is pure comedy gold that is all just so effortless. So good to see." GNASH COMICS 2023
“A master class, every piece a satisfying and coherent whole. The stories manage to work structurally while at the same time being funny, or sad or disturbing—often all at once.' Structo
"A delicious collection of short stories. Opaque, enigmatic and surreal, the meaning tantalisingly close, but just out of reach, they hit you when you least expect it." Tusk Magazine
'Gaffney’s narratives weave a taught line between the everyday and the fantastic. You’ll laugh, you’ll weep, and you’ll feel disgust and sorrow. It is a rare skill that can evoke such emotions, even rarer that someone can do it 69 times in one book.' The Fiction Stroker
‘Almost every story flips your emotions and expectation when you turn from its opening page to its closing’ – Book Munch
'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.' The Big Issue
'You will forget where you are, what you’re supposed to be doing and where you’re supposed to be going. It is utterly, and wonderfully addictive. Each 150-word story is a self-contained universe, each a world where reality becomes irrelevant, and it’s the words that matter.' The List
'Gaffney's world is an intriguing one to dip into - you just wouldn't want to live there.' The Workshy Fop
" "His miniature stories, creepy and amusing in equal measure, are a glimpse into a hive of the uncanny. By the time one has finished reading Gaffney’s collection one is living deep in the midst of his strange creation, wondering why not everyone in the real world behaves in the same fiendishly weird manner. He frequently exhibits a turn of phrase that is simply enchanting; Gaffney knows how to paint a powerful picture and does so time and time again" Sabotage Magazine
"The stories constantly tease and surprise, each sentence convincing in itself, but the next one unsettling, disturbing our expectations, leaving us unsure where we are. They slip away from normality into the strangeness of other people" Cumberland News
"With a poet’s eye and an iconoclastic sense of humour Gaffney weaves the everyday and the bizarre with finesse and aplomb." Litro magazine
“An Arthurian quest for craft ale & moderately expensive grub. A question. A curveball. A runner. Food as art & art as food for thought. Author Vs Reader: a hilarious distillation of textworld theory with a killer ending. Be careful what you wish for.” Matt Collbeck
“This is a brilliantly sinister and often counterintuitively amusing evocation of a man’s visit with his girl friend to Kendal to launch his graphic novel at a comic book festival, where things become wholly against the expectations of treating themselves to uncustomary posher cuisine and countrified inns with log fires — even the countryside itself is nightmarishly countrified! And so much more that happens after the frame’s margin or a text’s semi-colon, with the subtle or unsubtle clue by sleight of writerly hand of ‘Einstein’ relativity inserted somewhere in the text alongside the static hugging of hello or of goodbye being as ambiguous as a non-existent ‘candlelit snug’!” Des Lewis
Brilliant I concur with the quote on the cover. Bang up to date, but also hauntingly timeless. And what an ending! Great stuff. Joanne Done
Tho' set in the north, the urban/rural dissonance & the sense of growing unease might appeal to anyone interested in the west country & the distinct experience of 'outsiders' coming to Cornwall! James Downs
