Elaine McCluskey Author

The Gift Child returns to the scene of the action. S**g Harbour, NS, where aliens may or may not have visited and Harriett, our protagonist, meets a mysterious stranger with green eyes. **gHarbour

"When you go to a new place, any new place, it takes time to get your bearings—to figure out what makes people happy, what makes them scared. Down here, it is the ocean, the constant that runs through villages and graveyards. Vacillating between benevolence and rage. The ocean is what feeds families; it is what breaks mothers’ hearts. You can pretend that it does not matter so much—you can pretend that it is not bad luck to be followed by a shark, that dope and booze do not give you courage, but they do."

From The Gift Child. Photo by Andrew Vaughan on dumping day.

Lovely visit to Parrsboro and Vickery House Books.

Another enjoyable day at the 2024 Summer Author Series with authors Elaine McCluskey and Donna Morrisey chatting about their books and adventures. We all enjoyed hearing them tell us about their books and Karen and I would like to thank them for coming to Vickery House Books and sharing with us. Stay tuned we have more great authors as part of our 2024 Summer Author Series every Saturday till the end of August follow our page for more details #

And the nominees for the Gilmer Prize are:

Thanks for the lovely review.

Elaine McCluskey’s third novel, The Gift Child (Goose Lane Editions), reminds us we’re all a little broken, but it’s possible to find peace within life’s chaos. https://shorturl.at/lD2cm

Big thanks to Sarah Butland for a terrific review in Atlantic Books Today. An excerpt. (Full review in the magazine.)

“The truth in Elaine McCluskey’s new novel, The Gift Child, is that there is no one truth, only fragments we piece together. McCluskey masterfully crafts a story, fictional yet twisted with well-researched facts….This is the story of Harriett, a one-time photojournalist who got humbled into a new job as a casino host. Her story is wrapped in comedy, heartbreak, and intrigue. It is also the story of family, history, fishermen, and Cape Sable Island.”

Sarah Butland, Atlantic Books Today

A final pic from NB. Had a fabulous time at the AX Centre in Sussex reading from The Gift Child and answering questions. Pictured with moderator Spencer Folkins, left, and author David Bergen. The audience was lovely and the facility is adorable. Goose Lane Editions

Happy to be part of Goose Lane's 70th year celebration at the Frye Festival in Moncton. I read from The Gift Child. GLE put on an amazing event and I was inspired by the ambience and the other readers.

I very much enjoyed my interview with Ryan B. Patrick for The Next Chapter, which airs on CBC Radio One. We talked about the role of truth, both shifting and unreliable, in The Gift Child; we talked about place. To air some time soon.

Looking forward to these events.

At my launch, I confessed that it is nerve-wracking waiting for the first reviews for a new book.
Two more popped in this week. One with a terrifying 10:28 pm Google Alert. ha ha. (The review itself was lovely.)
Big thanks to the generous reviewers and the Goose Lane team who got The Gift Child out there.

Though ostensibly about Stan – a man with a complicated past – Swim’s book leads her toward self-discovery as she attempts to unravel the mystery of Graham’s disappearance near the tiny fictional fishing village of Po***ck Passage, N.S. McCluskey’s galloping story, at once comic and slyly observational, is twisty and occasionally absurd – with red herrings and shaggy dog detours – but highly relatable. The Gift Child also teems with insights into the human condition and snappy turns of phrase. “Beautiful people are like that, aren’t they? … ” she writes. “They do not see you. They see your reaction to them. They see you falling under their spell; they see you toppling into something you have no business toppling into. And the harder you fall, the more wondrous they seem."

Kim Hughes, Zoomer Magazine

McCluskey is a delightfully deft stylist; her sentences are replete with striking images, as with her description of the old Swim house in Po***ck Passage, where the shirts on the clothesline “flapped and fluttered like hope.” Overall, Harriett is enjoyable company as she struggles, as we all do, to make sense of the many scattered elements of her own experience in service of what she aptly sums up as “a forensic self-audit to figure out Me.”

Reviewer: Rohan Maitzen, Quill & Quire

A few shots from my Dartmouth launch of The Gift Child, which was super fun. Big thanks to everyone who came out. Please note the Dartmouth flag placement. Goose Lane Editions

Big thanks to Laurie Burns and The Miramichi Reader for this great review of The Gift Child.

This is cool.

Celebrate Atlantic Canada! 🇨🇦🦞

Apple Books has put together a collection of Atlantic Canadian writers for the Junos, and can we really be surprised that the absolutely incredible Elaine McCluskey Author has made the list? No one writes the Maritimes like she does 🩵

Rafael Has Pretty Eyes is a short story collection that captures the heart and humour of Atlantic Canada. It was also the winner of last year's Alistair Macleod Prize for Short Fiction! You can read all about it here: https://gooselane.com/rafaelhasprettyeyes

Congratulations, Elaine!! 🥳🥰

I can't say enough good things about author Kerry Clare, who blurbed The Gift Child, and then posted this amazing review on Instagram. I have never met Kerry, but I hope to some day.

"If you've already read this book, then you know how vicariously cool I am for having blurbed it. I keep being amazed by this fact myself, mostly because when I read it last fall, it was as a printed manuscript rather than a proper typeset book and I just KNEW how much more powerful it would be—because it's a novel made out of pieces, fragments—once it was polished and finished. And the end result really is even better than I hoped, a wild, funny, gutsy and heart wrenching trip story about middle-aged photojournalist-turned-casino-worker Harriett Swimm who's taking stab at writing a memoir that's ostensibly about her missing cousin last seen riding a bike with a tuna head in its basket, or her larger-than-life local news anchor father Stan being an as***le, but which is really about her own brutal heartache. Sardonic, laugh-out-loud, tender and true, THE GIFT CHILD is a triumph. Elaine McCluskey is one of my must-read Canadian authors, and you should pick up this novel to find out why."

Very much looking forward to this. The Gift Child is mainly set in Dartmouth so we have chosen a Dartmouth location and a Dartmouth personality as our host. The search is on for old Dartmouth lapel pins. lol

One of my favourite photos. My father, lower right, and his brother, Ace, upper left, both pro boxers and (underaged) WW2 veterans. I would love to know the names of the other men in this photo.

Happy to see a lovely 5-STAR review of The Gift Child by Isabella Zhou in Foreword Reviews. Here is an excerpt:

The Gift Child proceeds on the irony of directionlessness. In their search for Graham, Harriet’s family follows a variety of false leads buried in the opacity of police procedurals. That her narration is part of a memoir about the messiness of truth is undisguised; she acknowledges that it is an undifferentiated mass of lies, multiple truths, secrets, and memories warped by time. This purposelessness is wrought beautifully in Harriet’s profuse description of sea-blown settings: Po***ck Passage is “a smattering of white wooden houses, a working-class Atlantis. Some dropped on the shoreline, some further inland.”

Review of The Gift Child The Gift Child: In Elaine McCluskey’s novel "The Gift Child", a former news photographer explores her genealogy following a mysterious disappearance. When her cousin, Graham, vanishes, Harriet is drawn back into the orbit of her narcissistic father, Stan. As...

Super excited to receive my copies of The Gift Child from Goose Lane Editions. The finished product is beautiful and feels perfect in my hands. Thanks to readers who pre-ordered this wild ride and gave me wonderful feedback. In the words of one character: "The past is the past. It is not a living, breathing like a bear." #

Sharing more photos from my storyboard for The Gift Child.

Also posting one of the book's blurbs, written by the talented and generous Alexander MacLeod, author of Light Lifting and Animal Person.

"A work of exuberant, investigative gusto, this book has everything. A massive tuna head in a bicycle basket? An egotistical minor celebrity newsman? Petty, and not so petty, crimes? Mysterious disappearances? Scandals in the courts? Corruption in the world of Olympic level canoe kayak competition? All the unidentified objects that have ever shimmered in the sky or sunk beneath the waves of S**g Harbour? How does it all fit together? How can it? An often-hilarious detective story about the making and unmaking of stories, about the search for truth, and about the complications of love and family, The Gift Child, is McCluskey at her questing, indefatigable best."
---Alexander MacLeod

Excited to see this awesome and early feedback on The Gift Child. Can't wait to read the final review in ABT by Author Sarah Butland
Goose Lane Editions

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Every once in a while I stumble upon a new to me author, a request to review a book, and a thrill of delight when I absolutely love it. It makes reading it and writing a fabulous review so much easier.
The Gift Child by Elaine McCluskey Author was one of those. But you'll have to wait for my review and chat with her to be publishing in the upcoming Atlantic Books Today for more!
I dare you to pre-order your copy now at https://amzn.to/422b9Fe (Amazon Affiliate link) and let me know if you agree with my thoughts.

The Gift Child The Gift Child

Thanks to ABT for this blast from the past. Goose Lane Editions

Thanks to ABT for this. Goose Lane Editions

Sharing this Goose Lane description of The Gift Child with order information.

The Gift Child AboutHow 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 ...

When writing The Gift Child, I made a storyboard. I collected photos, either taken by Andrew or clipped from magazines, to remind me of a place or a person in the novel. I glued the images to bristol board. I discussed this practice when I gave a workshop at the Frye Festival, and participants liked it and/or said they did the same.

I recently received this certificate in the mail. Big thanks to my MLA Susan LeBlanc (Dartmouth North) for recognizing me in the NS legislature for Rafael Has Pretty Eyes. This topped off a great year. All the best in 2024 to readers, reviewers, book sellers, and others who support the literary arts.

Great time at Carrefour Atlantic Emporium and the Puffin Gallery with fellow authors Scott Osmond, Quentin Casey, and Alyda Faber, also a GLE author. This is quite possibly the tallest author group I have been in. ha ha. Goose Lane Editions

BOOK SIGNING THIS SATURDAY!

Please join us on Saturday, December 16th from 12pm to 2pm at Carrefour Atlantic Emporium for our final local author group book signing event of the year!

We will be hosting Quentin Casey, author of "Net Worth: John Risley, Clearwater, and the Building of a Billion-Dollar Empire"; Elaine McCluskey, author of the award winning "Rafael has Pretty Eyes"; Alyda Faber, author of the award winning "Poisonous if Eaten Raw"; and Scott Osmond, author of "Hidden Nova Scotia" at our home in Historic Properties on the Halifax waterfront.

Signed books from talented local authors make fantastic gifts for the holidays, so come out to admire and acquire some fantastic titles this weekend!