A life fully lived inevitably involves some level of pain. And while pain can easily push past the outline of its edges by morphing into suffering, beauty is an ever-available antidote. And we’re attuned to it—beauty—even subconsciously; even in its subtlety.

• A gorgeous sunset on the hardest day you’ve ever had
• A glint of humanity in a place where everything seems dirty and dark
• A pin-dot of hope that, somehow, holds your gaze

Beauty is always there—everywhere—and requires nothing from you other than to notice it.

My literary memoir Sunrise over Half-Built Houses—best categorized as an addictions memoir and queer coming-of-age story—goes to dark places. But even in those dark places, there were always glints of beauty, of hope. There was generosity and plant life splitting asphalt to grow and smiles of knowing and connection. Incorporating these glints was paramount in crafting my memoir not only for perspective—that yin and yang—but to give readers breaths of reprieve.

Here are a few other books that weave beauty like a glinting, gold thread through pain.

*****

Do Not Say We Have Nothing, by Madeleine Thien

Few things in this world are ever fully good or bad and this beautiful epic about love and political turmoil and music and generational trauma depicts this exquisitely. Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a reminder that nuance exists within everything. Author Madeleine Thien’s masterful characterization transformed an intellectual understanding of history—the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square—into a somatic experience of sorrow and loss, reverberating into my life in a deeper way than a history textbook could ever influence.

*

Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay 

I read Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air while writing the first draft of Sunrise over Half-Built Houses and inevitably held the stark beauty and depth of Hay’s writing against my then-oh-so-drafty manuscript. At first, this overwhelmed me. But then, it ignited a fire. It’s been 10 years now since reading that book, and still, it's painted in my mind—the complexity of Harry; what turned into a harrowing canoe adventure, the tufts of caribou fur on branches, on water, the golden evening light.

*

All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews

All My Puny Sorrows is a no-holds-barred swandive into the complications of being human with all its joys and sorrow, laughter and tears. Miriam Toews is a master of juxtaposing pain and beauty, and this book does that boldly in its handling of suicide and love, grief and perseverance.

*

Birds Art Life, by Kyo Maclear

This is a beautiful, brilliant little avant-garde memoir. In Birds Art Life, author Kyo Maclear, plagued with grief from her aging father’s health struggles, begins bird watching in Toronto, vividly reminding readers of the value of presence and noticing. It’s because of this book that I remember to look up—whatever may be going on in my life—and when I do there’s almost always a bird soaring through the sky.

*

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, by Gabor Maté

Although In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts holds a different flavour of incorporating beauty and pain, Gabor Maté’s brilliant and groundbreaking book warrants mention. This book confirms what I experienced first-hand, which also evolved into the bones of my memoir: that addiction has a far broader definition than normally ascribed. Maté travels this road deftly, and in vulnerability, not only adding character and humanity to Downtown Eastside residents so often turned one-dimensional by stigma and statistics, but by relating addictive behaviour to himself, too.

*

Learn more about Sunrise Over Half-Built Houses:

Enter into the life and mind of a shy teenager coming of age in the early 2000s in a pretty, suburban neighbourhood where nothing is quite as it seems—including her. At a glance, she’s a student with a boyfriend and a job at the coffee shop. Yet she’s skipping class, grappling with intense feelings for girls and growing dangerously dependent on illicit pills with cute names.

Wanting nothing more than to be who she is on the inside, Erin Steele's spiral into addiction and parallel quest for meaning takes readers into big houses with spare room for secrets; past quiet cul-de-sacs where kids party in wooded outskirts zoned for development; where West Coast rains can pummel for days.

Written with searing honesty that stares at you until you turn away, then stares at you some more, Sunrise over Half-Built Houses digs down past pleasantries and manicured lawns, through the sucking hole of addiction, then further still to reveal a place where we can all see ourselves and each other more clearly.