An Astonishment of Stars, by Kirti Bhadresa, is one of our amazing October giveaways, running until the end of the month. 

Check out our giveaways page for your chance to win. 

*****

I love a book that is authentic in its exploration of identity, belonging, relationships. Life is complicated, sometimes messy. The stories I like best feature believable, distinctive characters navigating the sometimes-unexpected places they find themselves. With compassion.

I often think of literature as a form of reincarnation. What a joy to be able to inhabit the body, the life, the place of, yes, someone like me. Or, also wonderfully, someone nothing like me. I especially appreciate when that voice isn’t the one we always hear trumpeted. I admit, I prefer stories told from the margins. An outsider almost always gets my attention.

Each of the books on this list left me feeling like I got to be someone new. Someone I hadn’t really considered the experiences of before. And then, I imagine myself enfolding that new understanding into my own daily existence. I feel like I’ve made a genuine connection. Expanded my awareness without going anywhere. 

I believe in our shared humanity. And I remain hopeful for our future. The ongoing creation of inventive literature from new, previously overlooked perspectives fuels my optimism.

The books I’ve listed here are original in their plot and voice, but are all strikingly, profoundly empathetic too.

*

Bird Suit, by Sydney Hegele

The opening scene of Bird Suit sets the locale in a magnificently visceral, alive way using a metaphor of peaches. Sweet, plentiful, and later, rotting peaches. This is possibly my all time favourite novel opening! From this beginning the book keeps pulling the reader in to a plot that is compelling, daring and disturbing. The characters are entangled. Their lives are sad and messy. Hegel is a natural storyteller who creates an extraordinary tale. The author is unflinching in the depths their characters go to, and challenges the reader to go there too. 

* 

Death by a Thousand Cuts, by Shashi Bhat 

I absolutely love the way this collection explores relationships and dating with refreshing honesty. The feelings are real and believable, romantic and kinda cringy (in a very way that it is easy to empathize with), with not a speck of cliché. What an achievement that is! I have such affection for the protagonist in each story because each one is so strange. So themselves. And so very loveable

* 

Here After, by Amy Lin 

Like me, you may read this memoir of young widowhood in a single sitting, holding your breath the whole time. Then you might hug everyone you love too hard, so they might wonder what’s up with you. The author talks about how important it was for her to keep writing through her grief, but this is a gutsy, vulnerable story to publish and share with the world. For anyone who has experienced loss, this book is one you too will likely relate to. The feeling of sharp grief, lasting sorrow. Amy Lin has an uncommon knack for simplicity in her writing. I am keen to see what she writes next.

* 

We Meant Well, by Erum Shazia Hasan

Anyone who has ever worked for a charity will empathize with the ethical dilemmas in this book, the strange power dynamics that exist among “do-gooders”. For me this book was a conversation opener, one we need to be having more often. We are invited into the story in a way so deft, with a protagonist straddling competing worlds with very different pressures. Hasan is a brave, passionate and political writer, a combination I admire a lot.

* 

Grey Dog, by Elliott Gish 

My summertime book! This novel is immersive and chilling. Read it by flashlight late into the night for added effect. Gish’s style of writing is so careful. Her tone is perfect.The author makes the setting and time so vivid and believable through her deep sympathy for her fully realized characters. The story feels eerily familiar, with people I felt I may have even met before. I loved reading this one.

* 

Denison Avenue, by Daniel Innes & Christina Wong 

Denison Avenue is a Can Lit fave! It deserves every bit of love it gets! This carefully crafted story is told from a perspective we rarely get to hear, though aging and accompanying loneliness are so common. This book pauses in sorrow, pushes boundaries of genre, age, and background, and reinvigorates the possibilities of fiction. I have spent so long looking at each detailed image in the drawn section of the book, long enough that Innes’ intricate images are forever with me, as much as Wong’s brilliant words.

* 

A History of Burning, by Janika Oza

This novel is the first one I’ve read that so closely mirrors my own Indian family’s journey to East Africa, and then away from it again. Oza’s research was done so well it disappears into her careful writing, letting the reader to really feel the personal nature of this multi-generational saga. In the face of great upheaval, Oza gives us full characters each dealing with raw emotion while also navigating expectation. This book is complex and sensitively told

*

Asking for a Friend, by Kerry Clare 

Everyone loves a romance, but I also enjoy reading about the equally defining, non-romantic relationships we centre less often in literature. Clare’s story of a lifelong friendship is a great example of this. The two women meet when they are young and have a lasting, ongoing impact on each other. Asking for a Friend is relatable and compelling. I felt so much for these women navigating the entanglements of life. This isn’t a fast story, and that, to me, is its strength. A true friendship is layered,has moments of intensity that wane again, true to real life. Kerry Clare manages to convey this intricacy beautifully.

* 

Medicine Walk, by Richard Wagamese

This is the only older book on this list. But I felt like it needed a place here, as it holds a place in my life. This novel explores trauma and love, especially between generations. When I read this book I feel like I can see where the author was pushing himself to go deeper, into detail, into where the magic is. His work is so strong and clear. It is filled with love and sorrow. This is my favourite of his books and I think often about the immense contribution Wagamese made through his art. He gave us so much of his own heart, it seems to me.

* 

Attic Rain, by Samantha Jones

Jones is an accomplished poet and scientist based in Calgary. Attic Rain is her debut collection that centres her experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her work is visually beautiful and deeply relatable in the way she centres her home. One can read Jones’ work on several levels. She is a deeply thoughtful writer, a friend of mine, and while I haven’t got my mitts on a hard copy quite yet (at the time of writing this I’m waiting for my pre-order to arrive). I really enjoy her work, have always found her poetry so sensitive and approachable from the first surface read to subsequent re-reads. I can’t wait to read Attic Rain.

*

Learn more about An Astonishment of Stars:

The wife who uses the name of her white husband in public. The mother who cleans the small-town hospital while her daughter moves to the city to forget their shared past. The well-behaved teen girl who anxiously watches her older sister slip further and further away from their hovering parents. Each of these characters is both familiar and singular, reminding us of women we have been, of our mothers and daughters, neighbors and adversaries.

Kirti Bhadresa is a keen observer of humanity, especially of the BIPOC women whose domestic and professional work is the backbone of late-stage capitalism but whose lives receive so little attention in mainstream culture. An Astonishment of Stars is a collection that sees those who are unseen and cuts to the heart of contemporary womanhood, community collisions, and relationships both chosen and forced upon us.