Interesting structure. Story unfolds in several directions. I enjoyed all that. Even if Cameron tells us early on that he’s a liar, I believed his voice.

However, I did not buy all of what Greer describes. His Down Syndrome character, June, is a caricature. I particularly didn’t buy how the threads are brought together to end the novel. (Some of the threads that is; lots are left trailing.) Young man /would-be writer who hangs around gay bars to get people’s stories just doesn’t seem the type to run away to make a new life with his Down Syndrome sister who has been institutionalized for 17 years. Resolution/salvation/recompense for the past/whatever… It’s a phoney and disappointing ending to what was otherwise sharp, clever and funny writing. ( )

His voice will either endear readers to him immediately or find them thrusting the book back on the shelf vehemently. (He won me over almost instantly when he started in with his cat, Juxtaposition.)But we haven’t known him for twenty pages before he’s telling us he’s a liar. And a writer. Which is — apparently — the same thing.“Each writer is only one person, and one person can only live so much of a life. That life is rarely enough to write a whole lot of stories about. So writers pillage other people’s stories and call them their own.”I read this in February, but knew then that Still Life with June would be on my list of favourite reads for this reading year. More here if you're curious! ( )

His voice will either endear readers to him immediately or find them thrusting the book back on the shelf vehemently. (He won me over almost instantly when he started in with his cat, Juxtaposition.)

But we haven’t known him for twenty pages before he’s telling us he’s a liar. And a writer. Which is — apparently — the same thing.

“Each writer is only one person, and one person can only live so much of a life. That life is rarely enough to write a whole lot of stories about. So writers pillage other people’s stories and call them their own.”

I read this in February, but knew then that Still Life with June would be on my list of favourite reads for this reading year.

More here if you're curious! ( )

Still Life with June is a well-told story, a novel filled with humor, insight and heart.

Cameron Dodds is pushing 30, a struggling writer, a gay man, a "loser who knows he's a loser" working at a halfway house/recovery center for drug and alcohol abusers so that he can "steal the stories" of the clients. He attends a writers' group full of hack writers at Big Bad Bookstore so that he can "steal their stories," too. As Cameron slowly makes friends with his arch-enemy in the readers' group, and becomes more and more obsessed with the life story of one of the residents at the halfway house, we begin to see that this is a novel about identity and about the inter-connectedness between seemingly disconnected people.

Greer, a Canadian who set this story in a somewhat disguised version of Halifax, has a keen eye for the human condition and an extremely effective touch with serious situations. Metaphorically speaking, I found that he uses a simple guitar melody where other writers would lay on an army of violins and cellos.

There are places where Cameron's narration is a bit too mannered, too purposefully idiosyncratic, but not by much, and not enough to scuttle ship or even spring a leak.

This is a good book. ( )

Started off really interesting, with some gritty characters and a very interesting plot that unfolded nicely. After a while though, it just fell apart and lost its way. The numerous lists by the narrator, the use of "Big Bad Coffee" and "Big Bad Books", the hackneyed premise of redemption, and the tossed off plot developments (such as the truth about the pianist), killed what could've been a good novel by an author who can write really well when he's not trying to wink at you and show how clever he is. ( )