A disaffected writer gets caught in the morass of complicated human relationships when he appropriates the life of a former patient and befriends his mentally challenged sister.
The people in gay bars on Christmas Day are so desperate for basic human contact that they'd go home with a Doc Marten shoe if it made a move, and maybe even if it didn't.
So begins the story of Cameron Dodds, a disenfranchised writer who visits gay bars on Christmas and works at a Salvation Army Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center in order to steal the stories of the people he meets there. But when Cameron finds a patient hanged in the utilities closet, his infatuation with other people's stories becomes an obsession. Assuming the man's identity, Cameron seeks out and forges a relationship with the victim's mentally challenged sister, who lives in a home uptown. As Cameron becomes more involved in the woman's life, he begins to discover truths that will challenge him to the very core of his existence.
"It is a gift of humanity and storytelling that makes Darren Greer's experimental new novel a triumphant success. Still Life with June is a remarkable book, reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye, Fight Club, and Bright Lights, Big City. It's a striking, compelling narrative with a style so inventive and innovative as to be a new form."
Eric Shaw Quinn, author of Say Uncle
"Mordant, hilarious, and unsparing, Still Life with June is a scourge and blessing both. Reminiscent of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, Knut Hamsun's Hunger, or Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, but in a category of its own; if any school for it exists, it's the school of its own daring and invention."
Andrew Lewis Conn, author of P: A Novel
"A novel with edge and energy, astounding style and substance to spare."
