Picks by Danila Botha

Gifts for the friend who loves wildly imaginative, fabulist short fiction

An Astonishment of Stars by Kirti Bhadresa (ECW Press)

Lately, I really love stories that combine elements of the speculative, or highly imaginative with realism. Kirti Bhadresa’s An Astonishment of Stars is beautifully written collection of fourteen stories that unexpected elements, from structure to aspects of her character’s environments. In “Invasion,” a pregnant women’s anxiety about what’s happening to her body, and what will happen once she gives birth is articulated perfectly by a concurrent ant invasion. In the touching “Daksha Takes the Cake,” a writer finds an unexpected creative outlet in baking and navigates successes and failures in both, as she finds that baking unexpectedly inspires her. In “The Illness,” which brought me to tears, a man is losing his wife to cancer. In all of her stories, Bhadresa addresses race brilliantly and incisively. A must read.

Her Body Among Animals by Paola Ferrante (Book*hug Press)

I have raved at length about how much I love Paola Ferrante’s Governor General’s Literary Award-shortlisted collection Her Body Among Animals, and if there’s anyone I know who hasn’t bought it yet, I would definitely recommend that they do now. “The Underside of a Wing” is one of the most masterful, and affecting stories I’ve ever read about mental health, and it’s embodied so beautifully by the albatross. Each of the other stories is moving and highly original too, from “Mermaid Girls” to “The Silent Grave of Birds.” These are stories that will affect you deeply for a long time.

The Girl Who Cried Diamonds by Rebecca Hirsh Garcia (ECW Press)

I knew I would love Rebecca Hirsh Garcia’s book from its beautiful name alone, but each of the stories is a revelation. The final story, Woman into Cloud,” about a woman who has felt so repressed by domesticity and social expectations that she turns into a cloud, is a marvel. In the title story, a girl’s body secretes precious metals. In the chilling “Mother,” a girl develops a connection with a woman who is the latest in a stream of identical mother figures. Haunting and profound, I can’t recommend it enough.

Gifts for the friend who likes their short fiction introspective and moving

Soft Serve by Allison Graves (Breakwater Books)

Allison Graves’s Soft Serve is as delightful and refreshing as its title. This collection features nineteen contemporary coming-of-age stories about millennials, and is full of note-perfect dialogue, as well as references to tv shows from Love Island to Euphoria and Canadian landmarks including Toronto’s Yorkdale Mall food court to Montreal’s Mile End, and lots of St John’s, Newfoundland, where the author is based. In “Eat Me,” Miranda, who is doing a master’s degree in social anthropology is studying “Bill Clinton’s erections for a critical theory class.” In “Sugar,” the narrator says she’s doing her master’s in “some modern short stories about like technology and Instagram and feeling empty and shit like that.” In the quirky, but searing “My Friend, My Parrot,” Graves navigates friendship and tension, class divides and betrayal, all anchored by the narrator’s brother getting a parrot named Charles after Princess Diana died. In “Staying Alive,” when Olivia’s health obsessed father gets cancer in spite of his impeccable lifelong habits, she finds herself reconnecting with her childhood babysitter, whose approach had always felt both subversive and anchoring: “Olivia was looking to hold onto something meaningful. She really believed that people could love the wrong thing and still be okay.” At the stories devastating ending, she sits between her parents,
wishing that they were “both bigger and softer so she could hold onto them better.”

Our Lady of Mile End by Sarah Gilbert (Anvil Press)

This beautiful collection pays tribute to the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal, with vibrant, exacting descriptions and a generous cast of personalities and experiences. Gilbert phrases are so sensory and poetic; in the title story, “The heat hit her like a soggy sponge. Thick, humid, unbearable…” and later “her flip flops squelched the cannoli box…damp fingers slid on the screen.” Gilbert tackles changes and gentrification so acutely in stories like “Banquet” and “Made in Mile End,” and I was especially moved by the dynamic between the student Maya, and her teacher, Evelyn in “Introduction to College English,” and what is quietly revealed.

Gift for the friend who wants to read something beautiful that they can’t put down

No Credit River by Zoe Whittall (Book*hug Press)

Zoe Whittall is my favourite writer in every genre, and this gorgeous and innovative prose poetry and autofiction hybrid is impossible to put down. Whittall writes with such insight and emotional acuity about heartbreak, queer love, the writing life, isolation during Covid, and more. I found myself marking and folding down so many pages so I didn’t forget her beautiful phrasing, or her brilliant, laugh-out-loud observations: “I’m uncomfortable with the world but I rarely do drugs that threaten my baseline disquiet,” she writes in “Coco Ridge.” “Mostly writers aren’t attractive to other writers, it’s like two tops or two solipsists,” she jokes in “I Don’t Know Where I’m Flying Until I Get to the Airport.” But she is spectacularly good at succinctly capturing moments of heartbreak: “In Prince Edward County,” she writes “When I book trips away by myself, it’s like I’m trying to hand you a present, and when you open it, I fly up and away.” In “Big Deal Literary Awards,” she writes “We snuck up to the hotel pool, closed our eyes and jumped, revelled in the bliss and humility of feeling so lucky, our formal wear soaked, a dream floating away.” If you’re anything like me, you may find yourself rereading it multiple times.

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Danila Botha is the author of three critically acclaimed short story collections, Got No Secrets and For All the Men (and some of the women I’ve Known) which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards and the ReLit Award. It will be reissued by Guernica Editions in 2025. Her new collection, Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness was published in April by Guernica Editions. The title story, “Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. It was named by the Toronto Star as one of “Twenty-One Books to Put At the Top Of Your Reading List” and was recently named a finalist for the Canadian Book Club Awards, in the Short Story/Anthology category. She is also the author of the award-winning novel Too Much on the Inside, which was optioned for film. Her new novel, A Place For People Like Us will be published by Guernica Editions in 2025. She teaches creative writing as part of the faculty at Humber School for Writers.

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Thanks to Danila for these 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 Matthew Fox, next!