Elaine McCluskey’s Watermelon Social is a slice of life every bit as juicy and mouthwatering as the title suggests. —Chris Morris, Canadian Press
In stock
Elaine McCluskey’s debut collection contains ten comical and aggressively human slices of suburban life. From grocery aisles to strip-mall parking lots to school hallways and waiting rooms, these stories pulse with the bizarre and sometimes annoying trappings of in-between places and the people we encounter there.
In the title story a mother of two observes as the team of supermoms at her children’s school limps through the volunteer event of the season, propped up by Prozac and estrogen supplements. In “Strange Girls” a liberal couple attempts to understand their children, the children attempt to figure out where their parents went astray and everyone shuffles through the last few snows in a long Halifax winter. “Year of the Horse” features a lonely optimist who adds fictional elaborations to the life stories she edits for the obituaries page.
McCluskey is an avid observer of subcultures and demonstrates a feel for the style and micro-dialects they foster. From the “psychotically precious” Sailor Moon girls at a city high school and the last of the hosers, to a weight loss convention and the night crew at a small-town paper, this collection offers up highly specific cross-sections of North American lifestyles.
The stories in The Watermelon Social are as compassionate as they are pointed. When winter leeches into summer and your neighbourhood just doesn’t look like the ones on TV, it’s hard to hit your stride. McCluskey chalks the line that separates comfort and resentment, and locates that core of clichéd dreams and paralyzing insecurity in all of us. With deadpan humour, imaginative comparisons and the odd cosmic leap, The Watermelon Social gambols through the April slush.
“One day, I was in a grocery store with dented cans and day-old bread,” McCluskey says. “Above each cash register was a list of names under the heading Do Not Cash Cheques From These People. I was in line behind a heavy woman in sweatpants and a bulky top. She wanted to get change from her social services cheque, but the clerk told her she had to spend it all. The woman shuffled off and returned with a package of sticky buns. As she paused and caught a laboured breath, I saw the front of her top. ‘I’m Not Fat, I’m Fluffy,’ it declared over the picture of a large, splendid cat. When I started to write my short stories, I focused on the people who are rarely heard from in our society: poor people, fat people, suburban housewives and tormented teens. Occasionally, cats. I believe the Maritimes has its share of voiceless souls, trying to maintain their humor and dignity in a challenging world. As they make their way through life, they leave stories that are curious and amusing, triumphant and absurd.”
Elaine McCluskey’s Watermelon Social is a slice of life every bit as juicy and mouthwatering as the title suggests. This debut collection of 10 short stories is a picnic of literary delights that serves up both the comedy and tragedy of the human condition.
—Chris Morris, Canadian Press
The Watermelon Social is truly a book to be read. Once concluded, it should be set prominently on a shelf so that a mere glance at its spine would resurrect similar harsh examples from our own lives. We could consequently relish small forays into honesty and cathartic releases of all the things we censure on our tongues and within our minds.
For those moments when the frustration or rage within us bubbles like a poison and will no longer be contained, McCluskey arrives with the antidote. Her words and wit are sharp enough to give paper cuts as we read but there is a kind of magic here that is hard to resist. She captures the quintessential Canadian ability to mock ourselves and others as a form of social and personal healing.
—Martin Van Woudenberg, Event Journal
McCluskey’s stories are remarkable, clear-eyed portraits of the world of hosers, poseurs, emos, and supermoms. For anyone needing a suburban reality check, The Watermelon Social should be required reading.
—Linda M. Bayley, Canadian Book Review Annual
Don’t mistake Elaine McCluskey’s title for preciousness. “It used to be an ice cream social,” a stout volunteer named Sally explains, “but we switched to watermelon.” “Uh huh?” “Lactose intolerance.” The events of this school fundraiser exemplify darker social nuances and characters’ uneasy relationship to changed circumstance. . . McCluskey’s beguiling, frequently comic descriptors allow bitter nuance to seep in slowly, and the accomplished structure evades false nostalgia. Each story is an isolated segment of memory, association, or perspective, and each reminds us that a moment can be experienced from any number of mental directions.
—Jane Henderson, The Dominion
It seems to me that McCluskey’s underlying cynicism regarding the bizarre nature of our everyday lives has an optimistic romanticism at its core. “At some point … you have to forgive yourself — for everything. Every mistake, every weakness, real and imagined.” I detect a sense of hopefulness in this strong collection. Hopefulness? This suits me just now as I am hopeful to read more from this writer very soon.
—Wendy McGrath, The Edmonton Journal
Then we meet Bouncy and his drug-dealing bro, Crustachio, a.k.a. C. In One Bad Bounce, McCluskey narrows her sights and produces a concise, sardonic lament for all hormone-addled kids whose innocence has succumbed to a jargon-blighted, faux-rapper hell. An offhand slight to musical taste can tip the balance. “Why you be listenin to that lollipop shit? . . . You goin soft, C, like Snoop?” A Caddy SUV gets hotwired and a boy-man with a barcode tattoo and ecstasy pumping his ego puts pedal to the metal. After 130 pages, McCluskey achieves her tragic edge.
—Jim Bartley, The Globe and Mail
In Elaine McCluskey’s debut collection of short stories, readers are swept up in a world of banality and everyday drudgery that has been carefully caught in her wry humour and prose. . . McCluskey’s stories also offer up pieces of real Canadiana that make the reader feel right at home. She peppers her stories with talk of the anticipated Christmas Club Z catalogue, Mary Maxim sweaters, Canadian Tire money, Tim Horton’s and hosers getting into fights beside cherry red Chargers outside of strip malls.
—Melanie Owen, The Calgary Herald
McCluskey is the Queen of Invention. The endless sharp observations about surprisingly mobile modern-day life in the Maritimes are pointed and pungent; there are so many imaginative descriptions on every page that the book positively percolates with energy, wit and precision.
—Ron Foley Macdonald
McCluskey creates convincing child characters, especially those just bordering on the teenage years. At 12 and 13 years old, young people may say little but a lot of meaning resides in those few words. McCluskey reproduces the concerns and conversational styles of the young, especially in “Eric Montross Sucks.” This story positions the reader between two friends, Brandon and Jeffrey, whispering in class, jumping from speculation on the whereabouts of the absent gym teacher (could he be in jail?) to another friend’s staring contest with a cat: “I think the cat could have gone longer if he’d known it was a contest.” McCluskey weaves Brandon and Jeffrey’s hilarious conversations in with scenes featuring the school principal, Mr. Wheedle, “who, the slimmest pretense, escapes to the mall.”
—Sean Flinn, Quill and Quire
The title story of The Watermelon Social was shortlisted for the 2004 Journey Prize: and for good reason. Her characters are vivid and unique, and her descriptive language is fresh, sometimes simple and sometimes boldly striking. The narrator’s son “smells like love” and another character’s maniacal laughter “pushes up against the teacher like a barroom drunk” Softness and tension often inhabit the same space, even the same simile. The air in the gym is “smug and claustrophobic” and the narrator recalls her kitchen, which, like one other room, was “painted hysterical yellow, thinking sunlight, for somehow the brown [walls], like mildew or sadness, couldn’t be covered”
The Watermelon Social features original artwork by George Walker, is printed on Rolland’s Zephyr Antique Laid (rich and creamy), smyth-sewn and enfolded in a letterpress-printed jacket. It’s a quality work containing quality work: Elaine McCluskey is a writer to watch.
—Marcie McCauley
McCluskey, who is, according to the cover flap, a “former bureau chief for the Canadian Press news agency,” knows you well. She knows you watch freaks on Jerry Springer; she suspects you’ve enjoyed at least one of John Irving’s wacky realist novels; and she has pitched her stories to the warped sensibilities of Generation X. In short, the only slice of watermelon you’ll get is the one on the cover.
—Andrew Atkinson, Books in Canada
