The Gift Child

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.

AUTHOR

Elaine McCluskey

Elaine McCluskey is the author of a short story collection, The Watermelon Social, and a boxing novel, Going Fast. A Journey Prize finalist, her award-winning stories have appeared in many of Canada’s leading literary journals. A former bureau chief for The Canadian Press, she worked as a journalist before turning to fiction. She teaches journalism part-time and works as a writing coach. She lives in Dartmouth, N.S.

Reviews

“McCluskeys galloping story at once comic and slyly observational is twisty and occasionally absurd with red herrings and shaggy dog detours but highly relatable”
– Kim Hughes
– Zoomer Magazine

“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 Olympiclevel canoekayak competition All the unidentified objects that have ever shimmered in the sky or sunk beneath the waves of Shag Harbour How does it all fit together How can it An oftenhilarious detective story about the making and unmaking of stories about the search for truth and about the complications of love and family ltigtThe Gift Childltigt is McCluskey at her questing indefatigable best”
– Alexander MacLeod author of Animal Person

“The latest from the inimitable Elaine McCluskey feels very much like the novel she was born to write ltigtThe Gift Childltigt seems to contain the whole of the world transplanted hearts UFOs Dartmouth and Halifax and Barrington Russian spies missing persons and petty crime and as all of these loops interlace we learn about the greater garment of mothers and fathers of romantic love The book is like holding the radiograph of your own heart black and white unsparing”
– Nicholas Herring author of Some Hellish

“McCluskey is a delightfully deft stylist her sentences are replete with striking images”
– Rohan Maitzen
– Quill amp Quire

“Suffused with a pervasive sense of loss ltigtThe Gift Childltigt is a novel about how truth is created not inherent within the context of a collective family loss”
– Isabella Zhou
– Foreword Reviews

“Brimming with memorable characters tangents by the dozen and layer upon layer of colourfully descriptive passages that draw the reader in and sweep them away for the ride”
– Cathy Carter
– Grid City Magazine

“McCluskey masterfully crafts a story fictional yet twisted with wellresearched facts to spin the tale of ltigtThe Gift Childltigt “
– Sarah Butland
– Atlantic Books Today

“No one writes Dartmouth as well as Elaine McCluskey writes Dartmouth”
– Laurie Burns
– Miramichi Reader

“Nobody else writes like Elaine McCluskey one of my CanLit lodestars whose brilliance as a wordwielder is second only to her understanding of the tragicomedy of the human condition ltigtThe Gift Childltigt a strange and twisting family saga populated by lost souls aliens TV news anchors Dartmouth separatists and fish heads will make you cry with laughter and break your heart at once”
– Kerry Clare author of Asking for a Friend