March 21, 2022
Rafael Has Pretty Eyes, by Elaine McCluskey
No one writes voice quite like Elaine McCluskey, and not just one voice, but all the voices, ranging from the news reporter just laid off after twenty-five years, to the canine companion of man whose brain damage to the front cortex has caused an unfortunate condition termed Witzelsucht, a bouncer with concussion symptoms, or the man whose story begins, “I am at a Toast ‘n’ Roast for my mother’s fourth husband, Wayne. Wayne, of course, is a dud. Who else do you get on the fourth attempt: Idris Elba?” And later on in the same story, “It’s Never What You Think It Is,” which opens McCluskey’s latest collection Rafael Has Pretty Eyes, the character notes that he’s convinced “that life is one inside joke after another and that people fall into two categories: the people who believe Trailer Park Boys is real and the ones who don’t, and I no longer know where I fit because last night I saw Bubbles driving a Masterati Quattraporte with smoked windows on the Waverley Road in Dartmouth and it seemed quite normal to me.”
I have loved Elaine McCluskey’s work for ten years now, as a search through my blog archives proves, ever since I first read her debut collection The Watermelon Social, and got hooked on this writer who, with a single sentence, can break my heart and make me laugh until I cry all at once. She writes about oddballs with such a remarkable immediacy that they’re relatable, and with such incredible specificity too (“a Masterati Quattraporte with smoked windows on the Waverley Road in Dartmouth,” for example) that she blows my mind with her acuity.
(Upon reading her latest, it also occurs to me that I love McCluskey’s work for the same reason I love Katherine Heiny’s, which might be the highest literary compliment I’m capable of giving.)
McCluskey writes about people who’ve fallen through the cracks, people who are hanging on just barely, suffering evictions, breakups, or being held hostage at gunpoint. The extraordinary side of ordinary—the radio DJ who’s come down in the world and makes his living now at a pay day loan outlet, the local city councillor for whom it’s all about to fall apart. Characters who seem like anybody you might pass on the street, rendered vivid by the power of McCluskey’s narrative voice, and then the story takes off, ending up in a place where you never imagined it going. (“Life is just one extended series of anecdotes strung together until they kill you.”)
I loved this book. Perfect for anyone who thinks the Trailer Park Boys are real or otherwise, and even those who aren’t always drawn to short stories, because these are short stories that underline why such things are worth reading.
