The Watermelon Social

by Elaine McCluskey

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 shu|es 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.”

136 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2006

About the author

Elaine McCluskey’s stories have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Gaspereau Review and Pottersfield Portfolio. The title story in her debut collection The Watermelon Social (GP, 2006) was shortlisted for the 2004 Journey Prize. A former Bureau Chief for the Canadian Press news agency, McCluskey lives with her family in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Reviews

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is McCluskey’s debut collection of ten short stories about life in the suburbs in the Maritimes.
McCluskey’s stories tell us about the very human side of life, the one we all know goes on around us in that section of town fondly known as “the ‘burbs”. At times cynical, at times humourous, she describes everyday people dragged down by the usual problems of life whether it be finances, lovers, spouses or jobs, and simply just trying to make sense of it all. Her characters are vivid and with just a few words she gives us a full picture and an appreciation of them.

Here are a few of my favorites. In the story from the title “The Watermelon Social”, a school fund raiser morphs from serving ice cream to handing out watermelon because of the prevalence of lactose intolerance. How can you help but chuckle? In “Lulu Says She’s Sorry” a mother’s success in weight lifting is passed proudly from parent to child; in “Queen of the Losers” a group of women go wild on fried ice cream at a weight loss convention; in “The Year of the Horse”, McCluskey beautifully describes the night shift at a newspaper -“a society of insomniacs, burnouts and rookies. At night the newsroom goes shoeless, plays solitaire and orders pizza, shielded from security by locked doors and a moat of darkness”. In “Heart is Here”, a history professor is shocked to find someone’s else’s medical record has been misfiled and placed with his documents, and that he has a medical diagnosis he never knew about. Each and every story has its own charm.

Like all lovers of books, I like the look and feel of a text. Again Gaspereau Press has done a great job. This lovely volume has an interesting cover design as well as thick creamy colored pages and an interesting font.