Elizabeth Obermeyer

It has been a summer of reviews over here, friends! There are SO MANY amazing books coming out this fall, I hope you’re all tuned in and ready to read! 

I was so pleased to receive a copy of Danila Botha’s debut novel (Coming out at the end of September! Pre-order now! Thank you Danila!) because I have long been a fan of her short fiction. She has the ability to create the most beautiful and tightly woven stories that leave visceral impressions long after you read them, so I was incredibly excited to review A Place For People Like Us.

Hannah grows up in a cult in British Columbia called The Tribe, with her charismatic and ultimately abusive father at the centre. She and her mother eventually escape the confines of the community and start a new life. In Toronto, Hannah meets Jillian, the charismatic front woman of a local band and student at the same university Hannah is attending. Despite being very different and hailing from very different worlds, the two connect magnetically. Jillian’s artistic, wild and spontaneous (and often unreliable) personality is exactly what Hannah feels she needs and they become inseparable, their relationship moving quickly, blurring the lines between friendship and romance.

When Hannah then meets and falls in love with Naftali, she finds herself welcomed to another world that promises community and love and support—the very things she’s been seeking all these years. To be with Naftali Hannah must embrace Orthodox Judaism which initially feels like a massive step, but the more she learns about it, the more sure she is that this is what she needs in her life, looking to its traditions and teachings to help her make sense of the world.

We get Hannah’s perspective on her two relationships here:

“I knew that in some way I wanted them both, the excitement of someone I couldn’t predict and the stability of someone else who would always be there.”

Botha’s characters are so real and so familiar and they leap from the page as people you feel you know. Hannah and Jillian are great examples of the confusion that comes with being in your 20s and wanting it all (like Hannah, above) but not really knowing what you want or where you fit in. For Jillian it’s changing her name, leaving much of her past behind and living for the moment, while for Hannah it’s the search for a place to belong, a community that will help complete her and fill in the gaps of what’s been missing from her life. The experiences of both characters and how they navigate these years make us crushingly aware of our own 20s and how unmoored we might have been; how we floundered, flitting from one thing to the next, trying on lives before we really knew who we were. (Or maybe that was just me? *ahem* Anyway!) As Hannah becomes more involved with Naftali’s family and with her own conversion, Jillian’s lies and manipulations escalate, and threaten to ultimately destroy both their worlds.

Throughout the novel, Botha takes us from the clubs and bars of Toronto, to its Orthodox Jewish neighbourhoods, back to Hannah’s childhood in BC, to Israel and back again in a glorious whirlwind of sights, sounds, feelings, and experiences, and reminds us that humans are complex and complicated, flawed and imperfect, but despite these flaws and imperfections, we are all worthy of love and of belonging. Her prose is so sharp and evocative, hitting us on a deep emotional level in one moment, then switching to wry humour in the next in a perfect balance.

A Place For People Like Us is a beautifully told story of friendship and betrayal, of chosen family, the search for identity, and the search for love. And in Danila Botha’s more than capable hands, it absolutely soars.

Much gratitude to Danila Botha and Guernica Editions for my copy of this wonderful novel. Be sure and pre-order, friends!