Bøger af Elaine McCluskey

How important is truth? What is normal? These are the questions raised in The Gift Child, Elaine McCluskey's fictional oeuvre -- a funny, poignant, sure-shot novel, populated with a community of petty criminals, beloved broadcasters, undercover intelligence agents, and more. The novel opens with the disappearance of a man in Pollock Passage, Nova Scotia, a man last seen driving away from a government wharf with a giant tuna head in the basket of his Schwinn delivery bicycle. The man's name is Graham Swim; he's good at playing the harmonica and making friends. When Graham's cousin Harriett decides to investigate his disappearance, she comes up against her own family history. A news photographer now jobless and adrift, Harriett has lived most of her life in the shadow of her larger-than-life father -- a once-beloved TV news anchor and borderline narcissist. When Harriett arrives in Pollock Passage, she meets a stranger who tells her he is researching the Shag Harbour UFO mystery. While this stranger helps Harriett reconnect with pieces of herself she thought long-dead, she also learns that what she knows about her father may not be true. Vintage McCluskey, The Gift Child showcases McCluskey's unique ability to capture the malleability of memory and the complex absurdity and nobility of humanity. It's a novel that's hard to put down; it's even harder to forget.

Valery the Great is a crackling, electric collection of dark humour that follows the bizarre and beautiful lives of its protagonists. Sometimes sweet and gentle, sometimes sharply sarcastic, the unique narrative voices in this collection are always powerfully touching.Praise for Valery the Great:"e;15 Finest Book Covers in Spring Fiction This Year"e; selection (Something Daily blog)"e;By turns comic, pathetic, and tenderly tragic, Valery the Great is a charming collection."e; (Quill & Quire)"e;Her voice is scathing, very funny, her stories twisting at the end to leave me a bit stunned. I loved this book, a short story collections whose curation had as much thought put into it as the stories themselves, a fantastic package with a gorgeous design. In addition to considerable talent, there is furious energy at work here, McCluskey giving it her all, and as a result, reading was a pleasure."e; (Pickle Me This)"e;McCluskey is at her finest when she uses sharp humour and skillful, economic description to communicate her fatalistic worldview."e; (The Globe and Mail)

You go through life convinced you're going to get diabetes like your old man and one day you choke to death on chicken gristle, and the autopsy shows your blood sugars were perfect.The seventeen stories in Elaine McCluskey's latest collection, Rafael Has Pretty Eyes, follow characters who have reached a four-way stop in life; some are deciding whether to follow the signs or defy them; others find a sinkhole forming beneath their feet.A former fast-talking, big-bucks radio host now lives as a divorced payday loaner working in a strip mall; a football wide receiver at a small Canadian university works the night shift as a bouncer while recovering from his third concussion; a well-liked city councilor is arrested on a packed bus. As one character puts it, life is just one extended series of anecdotes strung together until they kill you.Set in the Maritimes but transcending regional boundaries, McCluskey's stories are experimental, sometimes provocative, and often about those living on the margins. Smart, compassionate and unsparing, Rafael Has Pretty Eyes explores the absurdity and interconnectedness of a life adrift.