Diddle is a sequence of absurd, impossible, but faintly connected stories about immigrants living in the USA that serves to deconstruct the “American Dream” mythos. Each story exemplifies the experience of life for outsiders in the US, along with the impossibility of absolute acculturation. A dozen short stories are each generated out of a line from the old nursery rhyme, laced with double entendres, multiple meanings and overlaps. Written by a poet with a rich touch of language, these tales question the very notion of identity and belonging, presenting instead the amalgamated state that most people are forced to live in.

"Diddle is packed with stories that fully articulate their premise and characters, coil like a spring, and then come to fruition when you least expect it.  They have a genuine and original rhythm, one that will make you think differently about what fiction can do." — Brian Evenson (Author of Fugue State, Last Days, and The Open Curtain)

“With the poise and spark of a master storyteller, Daniel Staniforth presents an alchemical phantasmagoria of loosely connecting figures moving like ghosts on the liminality of their adopted culture. Tempered always with warmth and wit, Diddle achieves a lightness of narrative touch which shimmers over the profundity of human experience for the detached and displaced.”
— Rebecca Wilby (Author of In Different Skies and This Wretched Splendour)

Cover painting by Mikki Nylund.

ISBN: 978-1-908011-18-3
Copyright: Daniel Staniforth
Language: English
Pages: 80  
Binding: perfect-bound paperback
Interior print: black & white
Dimensions: 13.3cm wide × 20.3cm tall (5.25 x 8 in)

Published June 21st 2011

£8.25

$13.25