Böcker av Elaine McCluskey

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.