Elaine McCluskey Author Reading

Please join us Wednesday evening at the Keshen Goodman Library for a reading by award winning author Elaine McCluskey. All are welcome.

Elaine's latest book, Valery The Great (M), is a crackling, electric collection of dark humour that follows the bizarre and beautiful lives of its protagonists. Sometimes sweet and gentle, and sometimes sharply sarcastic, McCluskey’s narrators are powerfully touching everytime. One is a young woman from New Brunswick, who uses figure skating as a way to fill the void left by her deceased father and ends up as a Russian circus performer who dances on ice with two skating bears. Others are an unlikely swim team member, a crude and ineffective search and rescue volunteer, and Sparky, an ancient boxing trainer.

Keshen Goodman Public Library
Wednesday, February 6/7:00 pm

"The title story, about a child who has been exiled to the circus by the circumstances of her birth (and her prideful mother), demonstrates the depths McCluskey is capable of. The story is an elegant meditation on hope, happenstance, pain, love, and fate." - Emily M. Keeler, Quill and Quire

"This is an eclectic, darkly comedic collection, entertaining in their content and hard hitting in their message... Her character development is masterful. Her people come to life, quietly living their lives in sometimes dismal but always extraordinary circumstances." - Halifax Herald