Concrete Fields

David Gaffney

Publisher: Salt

Summary

The countryside – what is it for? A paradise on earth where you can relax and get creative? Or an outdoor wool factory where every other house is an Airbnb and there are fewer trees than Camden. In his new collection of short stories David Gaffney explores the theme of town versus country through a number of different lenses, including his own experience of being brought up in west Cumbria then moving to Manchester.
A creative residency on the coast of Scotland becomes weirder and weirder in "The Retreat"; 'I've always had the feeling that the countryside has something against me and that one day it will take its revenge.' In "The Table", a recluse in Penrith uses mid-century furniture to lure city dwellers into a world of 'depressed farmers with shotguns and bottomless pits of slurry that will swallow you so hard you'll never be seen again. And in "The Garages" the pressure of city living forces a man to become oddly obsessed with empty spaces. Often funny, often haunting, often profound, Gaffney uses dark humour and surreal characters to demonstrate a deep understanding of how places, urban or rural, can shape, influence and sometimes distort our lives. 'People who like the countryside tend to believe in things that aren't really there,' says a character in "The Country Pub".
These are indeed stories about things that aren't really there, and this is why they resonate with you long after you have stopped reading.

Available since: 07/15/2023.

Print length: 144 pages.

Other books that might interest you

A Redeeming Sacrifice - From...

Lucy Ward Montgomery

The bookshelves of American literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From this continent their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Lucy Ward Montgomery.

Show book

A Profitable Weakness - From...

George Gissing

George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.  
He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent.  By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero. 
In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. 
On release he decided to start over.  In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. 
Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell.  His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static.  Something had to change.  And it did. 
By 1884 The Unclassed was published.  Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. 
In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. 
Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250.  
Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience.  
Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. 
George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

Show book

The Medallion of Petra

Christopher Cartwright

During Operation Desert Storm, Major William Harrison led a team of Special Forces on a secret mission to capture Haidar Kamel, a ruthless arms dealer. 
The operation revealed a treasure trove of dangerous weapons, along with a series of strange artifacts from the ancient world. One of the most unlikely discoveries was a small bronze medallion. 
They named it the Medallion of Petra, and somehow, it was much more dangerous and valuable than anyone could have ever imagined… 
…and now Sam Reilly must unlock its secrets, before it’s too late.

Show book

How to Cut and Quarter - A Good...

Halle Hill

After the death of her father, a larger-than-life preacher, a young woman returns to her hometown to attend his funeral and to clean out his house without the help of his ex, her mother. When a family friend moves in under the premise of caring for her, she begins to question her past. How to Cute and Quarter is a short story from Halle Hill’s Good Women, which delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South. Darkly funny and deeply human, Good Women observes how place, blood ties, generational trauma, obsession, and boundaries―or lack thereof―influence how we navigate our small worlds, and how those worlds so often collide in ways we don’t expect.

Show book

Before the Law - From their pens...

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family.
Life for the young Kafka and his passion for literature was often made an ordeal by his over-bearing and domineering entrepreneur of a father.
In 1889 Kafka was sent to the Deutsche Knabenschule, an elementary school in Prague. His father would only allow him to be educated in German-speaking schools and even went so far as to limit visits to the synagogue to four a year.
In 1901 he graduated from the classics-oriented Altstädter Gymnasium. Kafka did well there and across a large range of subjects. He now enrolled at the Charles Ferdinand University, to study chemistry, but quickly switched to law for which he obtained his degree in June 1906 and then performed the mandatory year of unpaid service as clerk at the civil and criminal courts.
A job at an Italian insurance company left him little time to write and after a year he took another job with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia where he stayed until ill health led to his resignation in 1922.
Although he saw work as a means to pay the bills and to allow him time to write, he received several promotions and was noted as a good employee.
By 1917 Kafka was suffering from tuberculosis, which required frequent periods of convalescence. Interspersed with this, were several intense affairs before he settled in Berlin with Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher who herself having left the ghetto now influenced Kafka's interest in the book of Jewish law, the Talmud.

Kafka’s on-going health was littered with problems. Apart from TB there were several other ailments, including migraines, insomnia, boils, depression, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains. He attempted to counteract all of this by naturopathic treatments, a vegetarian diet and consuming large quantities of unpasteurized milk.
His tuberculosis still worsened. He returned to Prague, where he died on 3rd June 1924. He was 40.

Show book

The Devil in the Belfry - From...

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts on 19th January 1809. His father abandoned his family the following year and within a year his mother had died leaving him an orphan.
He was taken in by the Allan family but never formally adopted although he now referred to himself as Edgar Allan Poe. His father alternatively spoiled or chastised him and tension was frequent over gambling debts and monies for his education. His university years to study ancient and modern languages was cut short by lack of money and he enlisted as a private in the army claiming he was 22, it is more probable he was 18. After 2 years he obtained a discharge in order to take up an appointment at the military academy, West Point, where he failed to become an officer.
Poe had released his 1st poetry volume in 1827 and after his 3rd turned to prose and placing short stories in several magazines and journals. At age 26 he obtained a licence to marry his cousin. She was a mere 13 but they stayed together until her death from tuberculosis 11 years after.
In January 1845 ‘The Raven’ was published and became an instant classic. Thereafter followed the prose works for which he is now so rightly famed as a master of the mysterious and the macabre.
Edgar Allan Poe died at the tragically early age of 40 on 7th October 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as ‘congestion of the brain’ or ‘cerebral inflammation’, common euphemisms for death from disreputable causes such as alcoholism but the actual cause of death remains a mystery.
Poe is also one of a number of authors credited with inventing the detective genre with his Parisian sleuth C. Auguste Dupin. He featured in three stories including the legendary ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and by sheer deduction, logic and a touch of Gallic arrogance revealed what was hidden to the rest of us.

Show book