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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 2, 2005)
DECEMBER 2, 2005 lUStpUt 55 books A Day in the Life Poetic and sobering, mostly in magazines that pay in con With or Without You tributor’s copies, i.e., litter box liners. New narratives speak from the fringes of society offers little hope or reso Greer’s writing is flat-out hilari by Rebecca Ragain lution for the reader. ous. In the book, Cameron dubs There is some satisfaction chain stores Big Bad Books, Big Bad in learning the circum Coffee, etc. and compares his own With or Without You left a hole so deep inside of me stances that led Lillian to writing style to premature ejaculation: by Lauren Sanders; Akashic I’m not sure it ever closed.” commit but “1 get a literary erection, write a few story’s thousand words, and climax my ending epiphany all over the last page.” Books, 2005; $14.95 softcover Lillian’s emotional abyss By the third page of the story, thanks murder, to the widens and cracks with time. At structure, the age of 13, she becomes feels anticlimatic because the reader knows that Lillian obsessed Ginger Speck is a murderer. The actress and starts down the long rest of the book tells the tale of path that leads her to murder. with a television the reader the knows He describes the people he finds all in gay bars on Christmas Day: “So along what will happen. desperate for basic human contact that they’d go home with a Doc Martens shoe if it Still Life with June how she became one, from her The scenes from Lillian's first obsession with the woman earlier years are interspersed by Darren Greer; St. Martin’s Press, 2005; $13 95 who lived next door to the with passages from her time in softcover actress she stalked to the death. jail, after she is charged with Lillian’s childhood made a move, and maybe even if it didn’t.” As jaded as he is, Cameron is not a heartless character. He is fond of many of the clients at the Salvation Army’s drug and alcohol treatment center, is murder. Strangely enough, it is During the six weeks in which Canadian writer uneventful, if lonely. Her mother in jail that she finds the most Darren Greer wrote the first draft of Still Life with When one of those clients, Darrell Greene, com sells high-end real estate and humanity, both in herself and June, he hardly ate or slept, according to his Web site. mits suicide, Cameron decides to visit Darrell’s men drinks gin and tonics, and her others. There she becomes He ignored his cals and canceled plans with friends. tally ill sister in the care facility where she lives. As father makes commercials and part of a gang of women who Surely once his friends read the novel they for Cameron gets to know June, she shows him new take care of each other in their own ways, disturb gave him, because it’s a delightful, insightful and ways to look at betrayal, disappointment, truth and ing though their actions may sometimes be. clever book. (And if his cats are anything like the other aspects of the human condition. stashes weed and cocaine under the bed. She’s an outsider with people her own age, pre where he works. ferring to paint rather than to hang out by the pool. After she is arrested for murder, Lillian’s sexuality And she’s a lesbian; she has no interest at all in boys, works both for and against her. Her lawyer tells her and she feels her “genes and chromosomes crossed that she has a better chance of convincing the jury Cameron Dodds is a loser. But he’s not as much bringing Greer’s novel to us here in the United wires somewhere along the way.” she’s innocent because she’s a girl, because girls don’t of a loser as other losers, because he isn’t in denial At age 11, Lillian meets Blair, a stewardess who do that kind of thing. But he says that will work in her about it. This is the kind of logic that characterizes States; it’s just a shame we had to miss out in the meantime. © serves her tea and brandy and calls her “little favor only as long as she doesn't let on that she’s not his cynical mindset. After all, this is a guy who goes flower.” The young girl is spellbound. One day Blair the most feminine of girls, or all sugar and spice, as to gay bars on Christmas to steal people’s sad stories R ebecca R again is a Portland free-lance writer leaves for good, and Lillian is heartbroken: “She’d he puts it. for his own works of “fiction," which are published who would never steal your story. Really. narrator’s cat, they didn’t care what he did as long Still Life with June was first published in Canada as he kept feeding them.) two years ago. Kudos to St. Martin’s Press for finally WE’RE OFTEN GREETED WITH BLANK, FARAWAY STARES. Not that we don't understand the whole relaxation thing, but minutes into a private test soak, customers seem to forget the honesty and professionalism that's become the foundation of our 25 years in business. And our written energy use guarantee. Careful and energetic handling of all your home financing needs And that HotSpring spas are in more homes than any other brand. By then, they're so deep in relaxation, we've pretty much learned to keep quiet. a few degrees warmer MORTGAGE Advocates 6700 SW 105th Ave.. Suite 200 Beaverton. 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