Narrated by the protagonist, Still Life with June is the story of a man who works at an addiction treatment centre. While he struggles with his identity and strives to make a life for himself amid existential crisis and a torturous past, he develops relationships with both a writer who wants him to spy for her and a Down’s Syndrome woman named June. Dramatic twists and unpredictable plot developments can be signs of great writerly skill, and Darren Greer is to be commended for taking on such a tricky story in this, his second novel.

But control is the name of the game to finesse this kind of literary ride. It should be a thrill but, with heart pounding, the rider should be delivered to some kind of resolution or redemption.

Here, Greer fails to keep the reader’s trust by presenting unlikely coincidences and characters with false identities. Here on Greer’s carnival ride, the toothless Zipper operator is more interested in the Whack-a-Mole girl with the tube top than in checking to see that the safety bar is locked in place. The reader is amused by the acrobatics, and the switcheroos drive the plot on, but the reader is left at arm’s length from the characters. In the end, resolution and redemption are thin, and laced with more than a bit of whiplash.

It didn’t have to be this way. Greer has enough talent to forego the acrobatics: his characters’ actual identities are quite interesting and complex, and any time spent on throwaway identities and tangents of a journaling narrator would have been time better spent elaborating on the characters and their motives.

In what could be characterized as a long short story, we find a small but compelling cast revealed with humour and irreverence. Greer’s fearless inner and outer dialogues are downright audible. There is no doubt as to his talent for unique and strangely believable characters. But it’s all the more disappointing when the strangely believable characters reveal themselves to be manipulative cons, littering the floor with so many “Mission: Impossible” latex masks.

All but June.

June is the victim of abuse and pity, and ultimately a simple pawn in the narrator’s attempt at redemption. June’s interaction with—and presumably interpretation of—the narrator’s favourite sculpture is the book’s BIG IMPORTANT MOMENT (as Greer would put it). But sadly, the message from this mentally disabled character amounts to little more than the oft-used stereotype: June is pure, nonjudgmental, without sin or hatred. Unfortunately, Greer misses an opportunity for June to effect real change in our anti-hero.

A recovering addict himself, Darren Greer must be kept busy running from his demons and it’s clear that he fights them as a writer, and for the most part wins. He admits he sometimes pines for a dull life. My wish for him is that he gets to write about one. He’d likely hit the perfect spot somewhere between dull life and carnival.

Joni Dufour is a freelance editor and writer, and managing editor of carte blanche.