Gift Guide Week: Samantha Garner’s Picks

Picks by Samantha Garner

For those who want all the queer possibilities in medieval literature:
The Winter Knight by Jes Battis (ECW Press)

Okay, I admit that the above is paraphrased from the acknowledgements page of The Winter Knight, but it’s so great that I couldn’t resist. Battis places Valkyries, elves, runesmiths, fallen knights, and Arthurian legend characters in modern-day Vancouver. Their world shimmers between the visible and the hidden, and it’s threatening to come apart at the seams.

The Winter Knight is part murder mystery, part urban fantasy, part historical fantasy, part mythological retelling, part coming-of-age story, part “how many more rebirths until we finally understand each other?” story. Despite its lofty inspirations, its characters feel comfortingly real. Its queer, trans, and neurodivergent representation is compassionate and authentic. Mystical elements are set amongst the very, very quotidian. Mythological legends become people like any other. They take public transit, they struggle to connect with each other, they’re hindered by their own personal histories—and now and then they pull an enchanted spear out of a hidden dimension. As you do.

For the friend who knows your personal life stories better than you do:
Peeling Rambutan by Gillian Sze (Gaspereau Press)

I return to Sze’s poetry collection when I’m feeling especially nostalgic for a time and place that may never have existed, when I miss the version of myself who fully understands where and who she came from. These poems are vivid and contemplative. They explore identity, belonging, personal history, family, and place. The collection is described as a “poetic travelogue” and when I read these poems I do indeed feel a strong sense of travel. Not just between places like Canada and China, but between generations, between identities, between dreams, between various wavering branches of a family tree. I’m left feeling a strong sense of in-between, but also the immense power and possibility in that feeling.

Oh, and because I’m me, I also return to this poetry collection for the food. Anyone who’s sought to form a bridge between people knows how perfectly food can connect us. It’s intensely personal—perfect for poetry that examines where we come from, who we become.

For those who’ve always been good at leaving, but not as good as they think:
Escape Plans by Teri Vlassopoulos (Invisible Publishing)

In Greek mythology, the Graeae are three sisters who share one eye and one tooth between them as needed. They’re bound together, looking out for each other. The family members at the heart of Escape Plans—Zoe, Anna, and Niko—are separated by place, time, even by death itself (that’s not a spoiler, I promise). Separately, they try to construct new lives. Yet in the past and the present, in Athens and Paris and Montreal and Toronto and Niagara Falls, over galaktoboureko or a six pack of Chicken McNuggets, the threads of their connected lives hum in the background.

Vlassopoulos has an almost heartbreaking way of layering the philosophical under the quotidian, and this is done to perfection in Escape Plans. This is a book that reverberates with calm observation, small moments that end up meaning so much. It’s an afterglow of emotion. It’s a quiet gasp years later, after it’s all over, when something in your memory finally slides into place.

For those who stay awake at night anxious about how their favourite
book might be in a language they can’t read:
The Lantern and the Night Moths by Yilin Wang (Invisible Publishing)

Translators are magic. They co-create with the writer they’re translating, even if the writer is no longer with us. Yilin Wang is a writer, poet, and Chinese-English translator who brings us translations of the work of poets Qiu Jin, Zhang Qiaohui, Fei Ming, Xiao Xi, and Dai Wangshu.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to read the work of poets I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, and I’m grateful for Wang’s essays as well. Her insight into the lives of the poets illuminates her own experience and shows the transformative power of translation. They give clarity on her specific process of translation, but they also invite us into her personal reflections and questions about the poets and their work. This context brings us closer to the poets and Wang herself. I’ve always been endlessly curious about the creative decisions translators make and why. Wang shows us just how intimate translation can be. The magic is illuminated.

For the friend who knows exactly which historical figures they’d invite to a dinner party:
Letters to Amelia by Lindsay Zier-Vogel (Book*hug Press)

Let’s say you’re a library tech at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. You’re reeling from the surprise ending of a long-term relationship when you get an assignment to read and summarize a previously-unknown collection of letters from Amelia Earhart. The letters are interesting. Painful at times, but interesting. You get more eager to read them as time goes on. You become drawn into Amelia’s life. You start to imagine the sort of person she was. You research her on your own time, outside of work. Then you discover you’re pregnant and you feel more unmoored than ever before. What would you do? Well, you’d process your feelings by writing letters to Amelia, and you’d find catharsis in uncovering the truth about
her mysterious disappearance. Naturally!

This probably isn’t your exact situation, but that impulse to flail towards connection in uncertain times is universal. Tender yet unflinching, Zier-Vogel’s novel is an examination of self-discovery in all its rough-edged, hopeful, honest forms.

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Samantha Garner is the author of The Quiet is Loud, shortlisted for the 2022 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. A Canadian of mixed Filipino-Finnish background, her character-driven fantasy novels explore themes of identity and belonging. When not writing, Samantha can be found daydreaming in a video game or boring a loved one with the latest historical fact she’s learned.

She can be found online at samanthagarner.ca and on Instagram and Twitter at @samanthakgarner.

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Thanks to Samantha Garner for these five fantastic book recommendations. You can order any of these books through All Lit Up, or click the “Shop Local” button on the book listings to discover them at your local indie bookstore.

Keep up with this year’s gift guide here, and stay tuned for picks from Erica McKeen, next!