Hello, Sweetheart

Reviews of Hello, Sweetheart

  • To begin to read one of McCluskey’s stories is to immediately be struck by the force of her voice, a voice rich with humour, perspective and compassion. Hers is a voice so compelling that it conjures a world, and the reader becomes immersed in that world, entirely on the level with McCluskey’s hapless characters….There is an exuberance to her work, an energy, that is so compelling to encounter, and there’s nothing else like it, really. She’s one of the best short story writers at work in Canada—which is saying something indeed.

Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This

Full review

  • Set in seedy shops and run-of-the-mill neighborhoods, McCluskey’s tales echo with anxiety and dread in a way that’s reminiscent of American Joan Didion’s books….McCluskey mines the dark corners of life masterfully.

Winnipeg Free Press

  •  McCluskey’s concerns are in the tradition of Raymond Carver, the famed American writer who also wrote about the working class in a way that was sympathetic and assured. She too creates characters that keep treading water in hopes of staying alive. McCluskey also pulls this off with clear, economical language that seems authentic to the lives it describes, though we never lose sight of the fact that this is a Canadian book.

Jennifer Glass, Winnipeg Review

  • There are some amazing twists in some of the stories.  McCluskey has a knack for making the reader laugh and think and squirm all at the same time. I look forward to many more stories from her.

Jodi DeLong, The Halifax Chronicle Herald

  • You won’t find misty tales of lighthouses here. Instead, these stories take us inside a sex boutique, the Sears Portrait Studio, VLT rooms and a cat show, effectively balancing the dark with the absurd. An entirely unique read.

The Coast

  • “People can be wretched, you know,” McCluskey writes in “XOXO,” and though the stories in Hello, Sweetheart go some way to bearing out this thesis, they also remind their reader of the humanity that lies just beneath the wretchedness.

The National Post: Hello, Sweetheart will keep you reading.

http://http://http://atlanticbookstoday.ca/read-local-2015-hello-sweetheart/