Just after my first book was published, I received an irate email from someone who had a problem with its premise. The exact content of the email is irrelevant. What is relevant is some sage wisdom offered by my MFA mentor Roo Borson that helped me reframe this angry email. Roo had once told me books are mirrors; what a book shows a reader is partly a reflection of themselves. Recalling Roo’s words, I was able to reread that butt-hurt missive with less of myself at stake. I could even feel a little compassion for the angry and scared person who wrote it.

The books I have gathered here are collections that have served as mirrors for me. Sometimes they showed me reflections that comforted—they provided community and support and solidarity. And sometimes they unsettled me, revealing personal biases and forcing me to confront and question my own humanity and sense of morality.

These are books I continue to recommend to anyone who will listen. I hope you get a chance to read them. 

*

Anecdotes, by Kathryn Mockler 

There’s a primal chittering in my body whenever I read brain-meltingly good books that defy easy structural definitions. I feel immediate, deep respect for authors who break genre conventions with intelligence and intention and style. This book has plenty of all three.

Anecdotes is a fascinating collection of stories, moments, conversations, and thoughts that are delightful and disturbing—often at the same time. I adore what author Kathryn Mockler has done: creating a book that, when I was done reading it, felt like a complete story—felt whole—but was made up of these shiny and sharp shards of life.

Shards that show how awkward life can be. How absurd and sad and strange.

What I really loved about this book, perhaps most of all, was how it immersed me in these cringy moments. Left me feeling sticky with them. The fact that the cover is a sanitary pad stuck to a wall (which features in one of my favourite stories) is just *chef’s kiss*.

*

The Spirits Have Nothing to Do with Us, edited by Dan K. Woo

Even long after reading this collection, I’m left with these indelible scraps of images—an explosion in a mine, a love addled young woman, a rented boyfriend, the ghost of a child wandering through her house.

And really, these scraps are all I need to say that this book—a collection of short stories from an array of wonderful Chinese Canadian writers—rather than being a melting pot of Chinese Canadian narratives, is more of a curated museum of them. There are distinct styles, themes, and belief systems at work in these pages, showing readers that Chinese and Chinese Canadian stories and lives are not a monolith. Any narrow perceptions of this type of literature will be shattered by these transcendent stories.

*

Motherish, by Laura Rock Gaughan

When it comes to writing about women’s lives, so many people try to make it seem simple, and—as the cover of this book suggests—shove us into boxes.

These short stories by Laura Rock Gaughan are so brilliantly crafted, taking the roles and tropes of motherhood and girlhood and daughterhood and unfolding them with sophistication and fresh, piercing insight.

The collection is replete with unforgettable stories and really gorgeous scenes. The kind of scenes I’d imagine were written with slow, focused tenderness.

*

Has the World Ended Yet?, by Peter Darbyshire 

Do you sometimes feel like the world is ending? What if it is? Then what?

Has the World Ended Yet?, by award-winning Canadian writer Peter Darbyshire answers this question with a collection of darkly comic stories that counter the absurdity of our time with compassion, empathy and the desperate search for meaning in a meaningless world. Retired superheroes battle fallen angels, an unremarkable man sells miracles on Craigslist, a demonic processing clerk solves mysteries in Hell, travelling deity salesmen cause problems in suburbia, and more. It's a genre blender of myth, pop culture and literary style that will leave you welcoming the apocalypse even as the world crumbles around us.

*

The Marzipan Fruit Basket, by Lucy E.M. Black

The range in this collection of short stories is astounding, in terms of length, but also, in breadth. Lucy's stories explore discomfort and dissociation in our daily lives, and fittingly, left me unsettled and rapt.

The title story, "The Marzipan Fruit Basket," beautifully captured the suspended blur of childhood—not as we look back at it, but as we live it. I loved how that muddled and raw experience was brought to life.

"Creamers" is another remarkable story because of its strangeness, but how it domesticates strangeness.

A stunning collection, and one I highly recommend.

*

Survivors of the Hive, by Jason Heroux

I’m fascinated by this gloriously strange and darkly funny collection of short stories by surrealist writer Jason Heroux.

I’m a huge fan of surrealism in general, but doing surrealism well—so there’s unsettling sense in the nonsensicality—is extremely difficult. But Jason is a master of the unconscious, and his beautiful and bizarre stories slip the yoke of reality and immerse us a world replete with uncanny and strange familiarity.

The last story about a high school poetry contest that could be linked to the end of the world and a fascist bit of string (string that appears in the other stories in different forms) was straight out of one of my recurring dreams about being trapped somewhere—somewhere that keeps giving the illusion you can leave anytime you want but you can’t.

One of my favourite quotes is from the beginning though, from a son who is telling his father he’s been hired as a private investigator by a mysterious client to find an ancient silence that went missing from a cave in Kefalonia, Greece. It’s so gorgeously phrased and resounded with something dark and lonely inside me. I got chills.

“I’m open minded. I’m not just going to give up if things don’t make sense. I can be baffled. I know how to feel bewildered. Not everyone can say that. It’s easy to stare up at the stars and know what they mean. It’s easy never to get lost. Only fools explain things thinking they know better. Only fools question other people’s mysteries. It’s harder to have no idea.” —from "Tell Me Again How the Silence in the Chamber of Exhalation Sounds."
*

Her First Palestinian, by Saeed Teebi

Saeed Teebi’s Her First Palestinian and Other Stories is an eclectic collection of short fiction that centres around the experiences of Palestinian immigrants to Canada. Each story follows a disarming cast of characters as they explore boundaries, be they internal or external, literal or figurative. 

Teebi’s stories navigate and subvert the narrative of the diasporic experience. They question what it costs to stay true to yourself while maintaining a moral high ground, and whether or not those costs are in and of themselves problematic.

This plays out in a young man testing the reach of “The King” by making a subtle, yet undeniable jab at the authority of an oil-rich dictator on his blog (and by extension, testing the authority within his own family). In “The Body,” a lawyer must smuggle a body out of the country in order to earn a permanent position at his firm. In “Woodland,” a woman leaves her husband and family, but can’t shake the urge to keep escaping even when she arrives in Canada.

My favourite story, “Enjoy Your Life, Capo,” follows a father and inventor whose child suffers from cystic fibrosis. He creates software that can monitor the unique breathing signature of anyone in a room. The program was designed to detect irregularities and problems, alerting care staff to the needs of a patient. However, when the software doesn’t sell to the intended market, and when years without a steady pay-cheque have taken a toll, he feels forced to make an impossible decision.

*

Smoke, by Nicola Winstanley

Dark and gorgeously written, these interconnected stories span New Zealand to Canada and examine intergenerational trauma from different viewpoints.

While trying to work out my feelings about the book, because some of these stories made me bone-deep unsettled, I realized that the ability to evoke this feeling is what makes the book so remarkable: so true to life, which is often devoid of sense or justice.

And it’s not that people can’t get happy endings but that life has multiple endings, and how we feel about them is complicated.

There is also love in these stories, in all its forms. “It Means Beloved” is one of my favourites. I keep coming back to it: how powerfully and deeply it conveys how damaged men are. How we find connection, sometimes only fleetingly, in unexpected places. It’s a story that stirs up the rage I experience when something awful happens and I feel impotent to help. Like all good stories, it’s one that encourages learning by imagination: what could I do—what could we all do—to make the world better for the most vulnerable? Smoke is full of beautifully drawn characters. The narrative cadence manages to lull even as it unsettles, pulling you along. A staggering collection.

*

Rubble Children, by Aaron Kreuter

Rubble Children, by Aaron Krueter is a collection of seven and a half interlinked short stories. And if you know short story collections, you know that a mere seven-ish short stories is either a short book or a book with long stories. In this case, it’s the longer stories.

This collection explores settler colonialism, Zionism, anti-Zionism, and belonging through the lives of a chorus of characters. These are stories that unsetlle with the space they create in them. They are stories that ask us to examine what we expect from our narratives. How much comfort? How much closure? How much information do we really need to know someone did something wrong.

Rubble Children is a mirror encouraging us to examine our morality.

*

Chrysalis, by Anuja Varghese

This collection of short stories was every bit as good as I thought it would be. Surreal and gorgeously written, the stories slip the yoke of reality and take you into a haunting, fantastical in-between space. 

With incredible power and a knack for dark carnality, Varghese subverts fairytales and folklore to reclaim the stories of racialized women. These stories are disturbing and monstrously playful; elusive and deeply rooted in reality.

I’ve loved books that have messed around with fairytales to give them a feminist edge (like "Kissing the Witch") but I can’t say I saw myself completely, and startlingly, in the characters until this one.

Chrysalis is chillingly beautiful.

*

Cut Road, by Brent Van Staalduinen

This is a disarming collection of short stories. Rangy and raw, bold and luminous, these stories probe the wounds left by conflict. The Acknowledgements reveal that Van Staalduinen was an army medic, which sheds some light on how these stories are so perfectly detailed—so painfully precise—in their ability to bring you into the lives and minds of his characters. You can feel the grit in your teeth, the heat, the deafening, resounding ring of an explosion, the tingle of a phantom limb.

But first-hand experience alone wouldn’t be enough to carry a collection. One has to be able to write, and Van Staalduinen can do that with surgical insight.

This is also a collection that took me places I wasn’t prepared to go. The story, “Those Days Just a Glimmer,” explores the disassociation from violence that’s the result of being exposed to too much of it. Disturbing AF. Also, world-expanding. Also, unforgettable.

The first line that hooked me, from the first story, “Skinks,” was narrated by a young boy: “Pastor Van Egmond smells like peppermint but his collars are always dirty.”

And isn’t this image—this exact, organoleptic glimpse—precisely what a child would notice. It’s a vivid example of the artistry of this remarkable book.

*

Walking Leonard and Other Stories, by Sophie Stocking

From a technical standpoint and from the point of pure enjoyment, Walking Leonard and Other Stories is moving and incredibly powerful. The writing is beautiful and the stories carry you along effortlessly, giving you intimate and touching glimpses into the tender and scoured lives of everyday people.

The story “Murdy” was particularly touching, telling a raw and rangy story of young motherhood with a visceral intensity.

The characters are vivid, so much so that I’ve found myself thinking about them—wondering what’s become of them and how they are—in the same way I’d wonder about someone whose life had briefly, but unforgettably brushed mine in the real world.

*

Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness, by Danila Botha

Women’s bodies as source of pain, women’s pleasure is a source of pain—pleasure in food, sex, deviance—this is the thread in this compelling collection of short stories that I latched onto (and why the title is so perfect).

As women, it can feel like so much that makes us whole and complex and human is also what makes us inappropriate.

One of my favourite stories in the collection is “Black Market Encounters,” which is a story about a bunch of women who think they’re in a support group for women who’ve met partners (past or current) in socially unacceptable ways. A midwife who ends up married to and pregnant by the husband of one of her patients. A teacher who has sex with two of her teenage students. A nanny who has a threesome with her employers. A nurse who drugs one of her patients so she can be with the husband. This story frames these women as, not good, but morally complex, and on a spectrum—the effect of which forces us to interrogate where we draw the line. Sometimes it feels obvious, and sometimes, the line feels blurred.

A remarkable collection.

*

Learn more about Widow Fantasies:

Fantasies are places we visit; we can't live there. The stories in Widow Fantasies explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. As her marriage falls apart, one woman forms a strange, but vital attachment to her pet goldfish. Another woman searches for a way out of her life as her husband's caregiver, and a visit with a Tarot card reader gives her dark hope. A middle-aged woman struggles with accepting getting older, and her waning bladder control. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in brief, unforgettable, and stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women.