Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness is Danila Botha’s third collection of short fiction. In these brilliant stories she observes with her signature vulnerability and humour what it’s like to struggle to find your place in the world. From the bullied twelve-year-old (Born, Not Made) to the musician saved from sleeping in doorways (Blasting Molly Rockets), to the sculptor who builds a golem and fulfills her Holocaust survivor grandmother’s wish to protect her sister (Able to Pass) to a student who overdoses on opiates and meets an adult Anne Frank (Like An Alligator Eyeing a Small Fish), these stories pulse with Botha’s signature empathy and originality. Botha also addresses what it means to be Jewish, with characters who rethink their whole identity (Soulmates) to those who hold on at all costs (Dark and Lilac Fairies). As in her previous collection, the Trillium and Vine nominated For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness will make you laugh and cry, but above all it will make you feel less alone.

Danila Botha is a fiction writer based in Toronto. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, she studied Creative Writing at York University and at Humber College’s School for Writers. Her first book, a collection of short stories called Got No Secrets (Tightrope Books, 2010) was praised by the Globe and Mail: “The force of the writing is formidable … the staying power lies in Botha’s carefully inflected first person narration.” It was also published in South Africa (Modjaji Books, 2011). Danila has guest-edited the National Post’s “The Afterword,” and her short stories have appeared in Broken Pencil’s fiction issue, Douglas Glover’s Numero Cinq Magazine, and the Adroit Journal. Too Much on the Inside is her first novel.

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In these deft short stories, Danila Botha explores the desires of a cast of young, urban artists driven to escape their circumstances, from trendy Shakshuka bars to reality matchmaking shows to the horrors of the Holocaust. With fine prose and tender insight, Botha has written an indelible collection.

Kathy Friedman, author of All the Shining People

This sparkling collection documents the inner lives of girls and women with vivid emotion and delicious attitude. Botha’s brilliant stories demand to be chewed on, mulled over, and talked about. Casting off the expectations of traditional style, they offer readers the comfort of generational wisdom and a clear-eyed view of our tumultuous present.

Carleigh Baker, award-winning author of Bad Endings, Mudlarkers and Last Woman

We humans: what an endless braid of tender, joyful, painful, loving emotional pas de deux we live. In these stories, Danila Botha examines the complex knotting and unknotting of these contemporary relationships with vivid insight, deep compassion, and unflinching incision. They are virtuoso variations about what makes us human, what makes us—and our stories—irresistible, moving and compelling.

Gary Barwin, award-winning author of Yiddish for Pirates, Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted, and co-author of duck eats yeast, quacks, explodes; man loses eye

This book is pure, raw power. Like Botha’s other work, the stories in Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness push against every boundary, offering unsettling glimpses into the wars women wage on their bodies, the messiness of finding and losing love, the self- sabotaging patterns that both propel and hold back. Botha is a master of balance, offering switchbacks between the pristine beauty of actual happiness paired with deep, unapologetic rage rooted in larger contexts like the patriarchy and historical genocides. Each story feels so real—the clear and authentic character voices often hold the power to reveal the exact essence of a character, sometimes in a single sentence. Though these stories capture a wide range of geographies and experiences, they always reflect on important, universal questions—where are the boundaries of forgiveness? Where is the line between two much and not enough?

Leesa Dean, author of Waiting for the Cyclone and Filling Station

Incredibly deep and powerful … [the stories] feel like John Cheever’s “Reunion,” using what’s said and what’s not said to give us a novel’s worth of story … It’s a brilliant display of technical skill and a satisfying read, and [it] greatly impresses me.

JJ Dupuis, author of the Creature X Mystery series

Powerful and searing glimpses into people’s most intimate emotions. Danila Botha’s writing makes the reader stop cold, sit up and listen. She expertly finds deceptively quiet moments in her characters’ lives, that by the end of her stories, reveal themselves to be more pivotal than we first realized. The characters in this collection will stay with me for a long time. An exquisite book.

Sidura Ludwig, author of the Danuta Gleed Award winning collection You Are Not What We Expected