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When my sister died, part of me didn’t want to write a thing, but the other part of me wanted to honour her wish that I write about us. Still, I Cannot Save You, is the story of our sisterhood, and examines the slippery, tricky nature of grief, and what it means to love someone who hurts us. A light and frothy subject, right? Let’s just say, I cry a lot while I work.

Writing a book requires plenty of research, but many people wondered why I’d choose to read about death and grief, about suffering and pain. But to me, that’s the wrong question—why avoid something that is so prevalent in our lives? Why not find the beauty in it? Why not make space for others to find their own experience reflected on the page? This is where I find hope. I write out of a sense of hope.

So these are some of my favourite books on my shelf that examine tricky subjects but also, provided levity and joy in a time of such hardship.

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Exculpatory Lilies: Poems, by Susan Musgrave

Susan was my thesis advisor, so I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fangirl over her work, but there’s good reason to admire her. This stunning collection of new poetry is a book I keep returning to, again and again. It’s a stark, emotive analysis on grief that made me, as a fellow bereaved person, feel seen. These poems create such vivid images in my mind that I close my eyes after each verse and feel like I’m breathing inside that poem—with Musgrave providing the air.

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Dead Mom Walking, by Rachel Matlow

This book was the book I needed in response to my own grief. In equal measure, Matlow’s account of their mother’s battle with cancer (in which she seeks to treat it naturally…without success) is funny, heartbreaking, and so very real. Especially wonderful was Matlow’s hunt for the answer as to how we love someone who does things we disagree with: fully, and with compassion. I recommend this book to every single person who asks about my favourites.

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Foghorn Echoes, by Danny Ramadan

This book enchanted me. I’m a huge fan of Danny’s work, which spans such a huge range of genres (The Syrian Chef may be a children’s book, but I adore it). Foghorn Echoes, his latest novel, captivated me with his beautifully rendered character of Hussam, a man fleeing war and seeking a life fully led as an out gay man. While full of tragedy and heartbreak, the book is also so full of love and joy. Not only is the story itself beautiful, but Ramadan’s writing swept me away.

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Persephone’s Children, by Rowan McCandless

This book is flat-out stunning and a structurally unique approach to a memoir about a biracial woman escaping abuse. McCandless takes the form of nonfiction and flips it on its head, spins it in the air and tells a heart-wrenching story while showing that she’s a crackerjack wielder of words. Above all, McCandless allows readers to step into the shoes of someone who may or may not share the experience, but can grow and learn from someone else’s.

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The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, by Bianca Marais

I snort-laughed my way through this fun, patriarchy-smashing page-turner and used it to break up the heavier days of my own work. Marais uses her wild literary talent to tell a story that carries heavy themes with a fun sense of levity (sometimes, literally levitating with magical spells). When a crew of octogenarian witches have their home threatened, each uses their powers not only to save their house, but to lift other women up into the light. Couldn’t we all use more of that?

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Care Of, by Ivan Coyote

I have read this tiny volume—a collection of letters written to and answered by performer and storyteller, Ivan Coyote—so many times that my copy looks like it’s been through the washing machine. This book, published during the pandemic, is not only full of Coyote’s eloquent, musical writing skills, but offers hope, love, and joy in a time that so many, the LGBTQIA++ community especially, feel such darkness. A balm to the soul.

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Please Join Us, by Catherine McKenzie

One of my greatest pleasures is a weekend with a cup of tea and a juicy, smart thriller, which harkens back to my first love of reading to escape. McKenzie always delivers on that front! Please Join Us is full of all the things I crave in a fast-moving thriller (Crime! Secret clubs! Plot twists!) but simultaneously examines hefty subjects, like what it is to be a woman working in a man’s world.

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On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times, by Michael Ignatieff

When you write about grief and death and myriad other sad things, it’s easy to get, well, depressed. On Consolation is a collection of essays and insights about how we carry on in dark times. The contributors are broad ranging—some are philosophers, some authors, some doctors—to make for a love letter to the pain of life and all the sparkle that stems from it.

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Learn more about Still I Cannot Save You:

With honesty, love, and humour, in this moving memoir, Kelly S. Thompson explores her relationship with her older sister, Meghan. Tested by addiction, abuse, and illness, the sisters’ relationship crumbles, only to be rebuilt into an everlasting bond.

Kelly Thompson and her older sister, Meghan, are proof that sisterhood doesn’t always equate to friendship.

Growing up within a military family, the girls were close despite being temperamental opposites—Kelly, anxious and studious, looked to her big sister for comfort, and Meghan, who battled kidney cancer as a toddler, was gregarious and protective. But as she approached adulthood, Meghan spi­ralled into a cocaine and opioid addiction, and Kelly’s relationship with her sister was torn apart.

Their paths diverge as they live their own lives, and it is only when Meghan becomes a mother that she and Kelly tentatively face past hurts and reexamine what sisterhood really means. But their reunion is threatened when Meghan receives a shocking new diagnosis on a day that should be one for celebration. Now, as the family reels at the prospect of the biggest loss imaginable, Kelly and Meghan must share all that they can in the time that they have, using their mutual sense of humour to chart a course through the darkest of days.

At once funny and heartbreaking, Still, I Cannot Save You is a story about addiction, abuse, and tragedy, but above all, it is a powerful portrait of an enduring love between sisters.