Review of The Gift Child by Elaine McCluskey, from Atlantic Books Today 99

The truth in Elaine McCluksey’s new novel The Gift Child is that there is no one truth, only fragments we piece together. The novel poses as a memoir and offers several versions of the same key scenario, depending on who is experiencing it or retelling the tale. McCluskey masterfully crafts a story, fictional yet twisted with well-researched facts, to spin the tale of The Gift Child, leaving this reader wondering who the gift child is. 

The novel is primarily a search for missing cousin Graham, who was last seen biking alone in rural Nova Scotia with a big tuna head in the basket, and who turns out to be a shadier and stranger person than Harriet could have guessed. Her search for him turns into an accidental expose of their shared and mysterious family ancestry. The search for the truth merges into “what could have been” segments and at times the characters yearn for another life. 

This is the story of Harriet, a one-time photojournalist who got humbled into a new job as a casino host. She’s the daughter of Stan Swim, a local TV celebrity, the sister of Peter, cousin of the missing Graham, and ex-wife to Jack. Her story is wrapped in comedy, heartbreak and intrigue. It is also the story of family, history, fisherman and Cape Sable Island. Harriet wants to figure out what happened to her cousin, and her search takes her to the archives, and to a few beaches hunting for bodies, only to find  family is more than blood – and much more than one person can expect.  
 
The Gift Child begins with this vulnerable confession: “I wrote as truthfully as I could, knowing that my memory is as imperfect I am, a mess of bad clothes and bad decisions and men I should never have trusted.” 

Set in Dartmouth as well as Shag Harbour, with reference to the historical and extraterrestrial events there, the journey of best-kept secrets and oversharing of personal information, it was a natural mix of truths and lies.  

Harriet is writing a memoir and taking a class led by a woman called Pamela. She encourages Harriet, as she encourages all of her students. “The group turned to Pamela for guidance, and she said, because she was wise and came, like most fiction writers, with the thinnest of enamels: ‘You will find your own truth; the story will lead you to it.” 

Has Elaine McCluskey had a Pamela in her writing life?  

“Pamela is deeply invested in her art, and arguably too sensitive for this world. I drew on my own experiences as a workshop leader to create Pamela, who is more delicate than I am,” the author says. “The people in Pamela’s group are sincere, but occasionally misguided. (One wants to write a novel about underground stick people.) That makes for some fun. The people in my groups were, without exception, interesting and intelligent, and we had great discussions.” 

McCluskey, like Harriet, is a former journalist and is married to a photojournalist, and much of that real experience comes out in the novel, which includes several familiar criminals from Nova Scotia. McCluskey says she enjoyed fictionalizing the journalism sections, as “the idea of truth could be flexible and benevolent.”  

McCluskey has not (yet) written a memoir, though she did offer Atlantic Books Today two potential titles: Grudges I Have Held for Forty Years and How My Grade 8 Math Teacher Tried to Ruin My Life, both of which I personally would love to read. 

“I am generally satisfied with my life, but I occasionally imagine what could have happened. I won second prize in a rinky dink writing contest once, and I would rewrite that scene. First prize was a yellow VW Bug. Second prize was a handful of Harlequin books. In a better version of that scene, I would also have won a yellow VW Bug and I would have been last seen driving it to the beach,” she said, editing her life on the fly.