adrienne maree brown (on “Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark”):
“This story will also stick with me - lately I have been really sitting in humbling meditation on the idea that the Earth will survive us, and that life will continue in some form beyond us, and even though I feel a deep grief for what my species is up to, the future beyond us could still be curious and celebratory. This story is a gift. The ending is a deep and unexpected pleasure.”
Yiyun Li (on “Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark”):
“Imaginative and essayistic, "The Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark" takes the readers outside the human-centric narratives and places us in a setting larger than our everyday life. It is a great story to invite our attention to the common fate faced by humankind and nature.”
From Stabroek News:
“McClelland’s gentle narrative makes a radical suggestion by having his billionaire character step up and take full, practical responsibility for global health. Rather than hiding away in a bunker and waiting for the world to finally end, he turns his bunker into a space where the seeds for a better, kinder, more equitable world can be stored and planted and tended in the future.”
From Story366:
“I enjoyed my time with Gay Zoo Day today, Mike McClelland’s debut collection. The subtitle of this book, by the way, is Tales of Seeking and Discovery, and it’s apt, as the protagonists in McClelland’s stories are young men who aren’t in search of an identity—they pretty much have that nailed down already—but of experiences. The author is more than capable in providing those, and I enjoyed reading how his characters act and react when put in those situations, of dealing with the consequences.”
From Out in Print: Queer Book Reviews:
"Although there are only eight pieces here–some short stories, some novellas–the book never feels rushed or out of balance. And McClelland is a wonderful writer, able to evoke emotions with locales as well as characters. Gay Zoo Day is a solid collection, and yet another winner from Beautiful Dreamer Press."
From After Happy Hour Review:
"We have the thoroughly entertaining grab bag of fiction that moves seamlessly from spy thriller to ghost story to hard-boiled noir and soft sci-fi. The protagonists in all stories are gay, but the end result is more than a simple orientation change. How does the story of a two-fisted 1930s adventurer pilot change when it ain’t the dames he’s interested in, so to speak? How does the budding romance between two astronauts in the near-future adjust along with their orientation? Genre fiction relies on its clichés to provide readers with a familiar experience, and McClelland is all too happy to exploit them...Impressive stuff, to put it mildly."
From Reviews by Amos Lassen:
"There have been many short stories with gay and lesbian characters and with gay and lesbian settings. What there has not been are literary LGBT short stories but there are now with this collection. In this one book, Mike McClelland has raised the bar. His stories have depth and subtexts and are really like reading short novels."
From Ben Tanzer, author of Be Cool and Orphans:
"Mike McClelland's writing is like the love affairs he writes so lovingly about, urgent, intimate and sometimes sordid, yet always attuned to the smallest gestures and details."
From Luke B. Goebel, author of Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours: A Novel:
"In Gay Zoo Day, Mike McClelland sets eight stories together as a designer would arrange a shimmering bold collection. Characters enticed by travel pages of glossy-perfumed magazines reach overseas only to tear their trouser's cuff revealing a wounded leg. They bring Fendi only it turns out the wrong size; Dior only on a mother who's been drinking and now ashamed of her rococo flourishes standing in alienation in her new kitchen overseas about to yell at the help. Birds squawk at the models' outsider gaffes. Each of the characters' desperate seductions is irrefutably sexy, occurring in settings across the world: South Africa, Hong Kong Island, London, Yemen, New York. Each story is a removal of the dress, left at the feet of the reader."
From Jim Provenzano, author of the short fiction collection Forty Wild Crushes, the Lambda Literary Award winner Every Time I Think of You and other novels:
"In his dazzling debut, Mike McClelland takes us on a worldwide series of fascinating adventures with eloquence and style, while maintaining a warm sense of humanity in a unique array of settings. The stories range from a Colonial Brit seeking revenge in Africa, the anxiety of an HIV scare in London, a boy's touching friendship with a housemaid in Hong Kong, a South American tryst between a pilot and a hunky cowboy, even a scientist and a cosmonaut in space."