Got No Secrets (Tightrope Books, 2010)
Short Fiction by Danila Botha
Here’s a book for those of you who like your literature hungover, angst-ridden, strung out, and with trackmarks. Though I hate comparisons, if someone called her Halifax’s female form response to Joel Thomas Hynes, I wouldn’t agree — the writing and narrative hook differs — but I would see the parallel in content. Many of her characters could be the girlfriend of many of Hynes’s characters. As an example, the protagonist of “Jesus was a Punk Rocker” wakes up in last night’s clothes, pinned to her bed under the weight of a nasty hangover: “I still have to piss, so I grab the vase next to my bed that once held eighteen long-stemmed red roses. It’s been empty for a while. I undo my fly and peel off my jeans … take care of business … [and] briefly consider sending it to him, with a note, This is what a sincere sentiment looks like, asshole.”
A quick read, Got No Secrets clearly shows that Botha has a real fire in her belly, and you feel the flames in this debut. I could say the stories lack subtlety, or I could say they roar. I can also say that there are moments of surprisingly original imagery in this book. There are also some too-true slaps across the face of the western world. “Being an addict to most people is way cooler than being overweight.” But there’ll be one plague looming over this book: the fine line between being repetitive and being consistent. There are some distinctive and more unique stories here: a story of a daughter and her boyfriend murdering her parents, or the world’s first pregnant (soon-to-be) man, but they are overwhelmed by a consistent presence of heroin, coke, booze, and never-subtle angst of the “real artist.” If everyone’s throwing up and angst-ridden all the time, it is hard to separate one story from the next. That said, I tasted some of her vomit-related lines, kudos there, her writing can get quite evocative. Her potential is quite evident, if that’s the goal of a debut, and she’s earned my attention with her vehement debut.
The title of the book, by the way, comes from a catchy Brendan Benson song:
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