Whale
Eleven brand new short stories about Whales by David Gaffney - get your copies here
“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
In May 2022 David Gaffney was writer in residence for The Whale project, an interactive live theatre installation in Whitehaven Cumbria that gives us a strange real-but-imagined encounter with a beached whale.
The Captain Boomer Collective created The Whale sculpture with Zephyr Wildlife to be a hyperrealistic sculpture that sparks debate about our relationship with the planet, our fellow inhabitants and the earth's resources. The Project was an Eden Arts commission.
During his residency David produced a series of short stories inspired by the whale and people’s interactions with it and they are all collected in his latest book, Whale, published by Osmosis Press.
"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” Tania Hershman
"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