David GaffneyRezensionen

Who knew that a short story about a weird, misanthropic accordion player could be so entertaining?

Valerie spends all her time daydreaming about her exes playing together in a jazz band. As I dislike most jazz and hate dream sequences, I was pretty sure this book wasn't going to go well for me. As it progresses, Valeries reflects on her relationships with the men one by one, showing us that they were pretty uniformly stupid and/or awful and certainly not worth a second thought once dumped. As I reflected on Valerie, I realized she was no catch herself and certainly not worth much thought on my part.

So, so, so not for me.

A small story about a woman unable to stop thinking about her various ex-boyfriends.

This book was a little hard to get into at first, but I must admit that I really did enjoy the book. This was quite the story, with plenty of paranormal themes and mystery. This follows teenager Barry Dyer and a ghost (nicknamed Petal) as they travel to the future in an effort to prevent some unknown danger. At the same time, a murder has happened in present time to a local girl and it plays a big role in the overall story. It is definitely an interesting and exhilarating story.

There are some things I don't understand about this book.

I don't understand the title. Sure, there's an off-handed comment at one point about all the places he lived, but is that really enough to name your book after?

I don't know what peri-urban noir means, which is how the book describes itself. Near urban noir? So suburban noir? I don't understand.

I don't understand the point of anything that happened. Yes, life doesn't have to have a point, ergo neither does fiction, but he flies around on a magical, knock-off Vespa with the ghost of a girl whom his father may have attacked, or his best friend, to the future, where a mass shooting happens which relates somehow to the metal lesions that have appeared all over his body, and there's scuba diving to put garden gnomes in the bottom of lakes, and he might be a Communist spy (we are in the 1970s) or maybe he just has psoriasis, he also might have killed someone, unless he didn't, and someone there's a cousin of his friend named Siobhan who he might have framed for murder in order to save his parents in the future, and the shop girl is stalking his father because his mother gave her shoes from a charity bin twenty years ago, and the ghost girl isn't actually dead, and there's a nuclear plant, and a thermometer factory, and the girl he likes is a lesbian, and all he wants to do is play his folk guitar and not punk, but he plays in a punk show, and this is all too much.

There's this one track where it's quite a compelling story. But then there's this other track where it's just like standing in the ocean and getting hit by a wave, overwhelming, crazy, madness. I stayed up late to read it, and got up early to finish it, but it's still bat-shit crazy no matter how compelling it may be.

All the Places I've Ever Lived by David Gaffney went on sale February 23, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.½

This seems like a book for our times. The main character is Eric McFarlane, a debt counsellor in Whitehaven. His job is to help people to manage their debts. However, his secret is that he himself in heavily indebted. The story describes his attempts to keep up with his debts, to avoid paying them where possible, to keep his lenders at bay. At the same time he wants to keep his partner Charlotte and also to renew his relationship with an old flame, Julie, who suddenly appears from his past. Can his schemes and juggling outwit the multiple threats that he faces?
Gaffney captures the weaknesses and self-deception of Eric in this unusual tale.

I've yet to read a bad book from the Tindal Street Press, and this book continued that trend. Like all their books it has a 'regional' flavour, set in Cumbria. It's not all lakes and sheep - though they do feature - it's more a world where people have crippling debts, where even money-lenders need the services of a debt counsellor, and even debt counsellors are being pursued by the bailiffs.

I liked the humour most of all - the author has a great way of translating the nuances of body language into text form - and the willingness to bring the ridiculous to life. Somehow he managed to create a scenario where a character is pursued to a council meeting by a giant Jif lemon, and make it utterly believable.

A series of scenes depicting slightly cartoonish violence are interspersed with the main story, and the reader is unsure of the identities of those involved, until the end of the book - this added an interesting dimension, as it is not clear whether we are supposed to be rooting for the perpetrators or the victim. Very clever.

I was less convinced by the ending. Given that the book had reached such highs along the way I was expecting something less conventional, less guessable. I'd say just enjoy the journey!½