Sawn-off Tales

by Gaffney, David

• ISBN13: 9781844712922
• ISBN10: 1844712923
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-30
• Publisher: Lightning Source Inc

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

The Volcano

Self-Portrait as a Cowbird

The Sublime

The Consolations of Astrology

Black Spark

Rowing to the Island

Into the Tunnel

Mirrors and Sunfish

Love Letters

Blue Crabs

Courtship

Orphic Tale

Mystic

Bed of Nails

Hearth

Tree of Mirrors

Memories of the Observatory and Planetarium

The Long March

My Grandmother Crosses the Gobi Desert

The Boxer Rebellion

A Great Aunt Remembers a Fossil-Hunting Trip to the Flaming Cliffs in Mongolia

Escape from the Chengsin Mission

Autobiography of Silence

Epic Descent

Pharaoh

The Emperor's Censor

Emperor with a Chainsaw

The Cannibal

The First Mental Hospital in America

Grace

Peskeompskut Falls

Mary Rowlandson's Captivity

Robert Frost in the Great Dismal Swamp

Eternal City

September Song

Through a Donkey's Eye

Inquisition

We Were Not the Greatest Generation

Building the Bomb Shelter

Cold Pastoral

Alphabet Soup

Burnt Offering

Mobile of Demons

The Man Who Never Said Much

On the Way Home from the Maternity Ward

Aunt Eleanor's Funeral

Good Neighbors

Rural Apocalypse

One Dog Night

Burning the Men

Naval Weapons Station

If You Really Want To Know

The Divorcee's Return

Fishing Lesson

Fish Story

Lepidopterist

Her File

Last Painting

Parula Warbler

The Night Before Christmas

Funeral Directions

Home

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Little Jan I was the only Janet in the office until she arrived but there was no problem until one day I asked Harriet for the long stapler and she said she'd given it to Little Jan. Little Jan. She wasn't particularly little and I'm not especially big. I didn't want to be known as Big Jan, like some bull dyke prisoner. Harriet tried to reassure me; the new Janet was Little Jan but I would always be Jan. But they might as well write fat cow on my forehead for all the difference that made. So-called Little Jan is a 12 at least, and not TopShop, more like Marks. So whilst recovering the long stapler I told Jan all about fast-track promotion in this place, the people to influence, and how to do it. Now I'm still Jan but she's known as Stockroom Jan and she's off long-term with stress.