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Darren Greer

Författare till Still Life with June: A Novel

7 verk 99 medlemmar 8 recensioner

Verk av Darren Greer

Still Life with June: A Novel (2003) 58 exemplar
Tyler's Cape (2000) 17 exemplar
Just Beneath My Skin (1900) 9 exemplar
Advocate (2016) 6 exemplar
Outcast (2018) 5 exemplar
Strange Ghosts: Essays (2006) 3 exemplar
Laws of Flight 1 exemplar

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“Randy claimed he had Alberti notices on bulletin boards all over the city.”"-I was rarely tempted by them. Until now."
As always my reviews are based off of my true and honest opinion and I do my best to keep all reviews spoiler free.
I received a free e-copy of this book through the goodreads giveaway. This is my honest opinion and is in no way affected by this.
Peter finds a notice on a school bulletin board. He feels drawn to it and feels it has to do with his missing brother. His roommate Randy tells him its a game. One were you have to solve puzzles. With the help of Randy he plays the game and progresses as it goes, but then Randy goes missing. Now he is on his own. Trying to figure out the clues himself. Hoping they will uncover the truth, not only about his missing roommate, but also his brother.

It was a great read. Shorter than most but a real page turner. At times I found it a bit unsettling like something scary might happen at any second. I didn't really understand what was happening most of the time, but it didn't stop me from wanting to read on and find out what happened next, and even now I'm not sure I understand the ending but at the same time I do feel a sense of closure.

I got this book on kindle from a free giveaway and I'm so glad I got to read it. The puzzles and codes in the book were way over my head and sometimes even after they were explained, but still I really did enjoy it. I can't compare it with anything similar I've read, because it is so far from anything I have previously enjoyed. It really makes you think and just when you think you know where its headed it spins around you and you end up somewhere completely different.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
starslight86 | Jul 20, 2021 |
The lack of understanding, mindless prejudice and fear of the early years of the AIDS crisis are recalled in vivid and infuriating detail in Darren Greer’s gut-wrenching novel Advocate. Jacob McNeil lives in Toronto and works as a counsellor at a gay men’s health centre. Born and raised in the Nova Scotia town of Advocate, it is to his childhood home that he must return when he learns that his grandmother is dying. Jacob’s reluctant return to Advocate is fraught with deep-seated and lingering resentments that centre on the town’s treatment of his uncle David, a gay man who also returned to Advocate from Toronto some twenty years earlier, but under vastly different circumstances. Born in 1973, Jacob grew up in his grandmother’s house with his grandmother, Millicent McNeil, his mother Caroline and his aunt Jeanette. He is eleven when his uncle David, a teacher and a man whom Jacob has never met, returns home for reasons that for a long time remain vague. All Jacob knows is that David’s return results in a great deal of tension and whispering behind closed doors among the women of the house: his mother and aunt on one side of the argument, his grandmother on the other. The bulk of the novel is given over to Jacob’s recollections of his uncle’s presence in the house and gradual and horrifying physical deterioration from AIDS. David’s return coincides with Jacob’s awakening to his own true nature—his suspicion that he too is gay, though at the time he hardly knows what this means. At first distrustful of and circumspect around his uncle, Jacob eventually forms a closely sympathetic bond with the dying man. But aside from Jacob’s budding awareness of himself and of complex events taking place in the world at large, Greer’s novel takes aim at small-town attitudes that have nothing to do with truth or fact and everything to do with ignorance and self-righteous adherence to inflexible religious doctrine. With David in the house infected with the mysterious AIDS virus, the McNeil’s are ostracized by the majority of the town and vilified for harboring a contagion that will surely spread. Jacob’s best friend cuts him off and pretends he doesn’t exist. But more than anything else, Jacob is distressed by his grandmother’s emotional frigidity toward her own son, her refusal to enter the sickroom, her flippant assurances that David will recover, that all will be well. Throughout Jacob’s adult life, his grandmother’s response to David’s illness has fed his resentment and twenty years later makes it impossible for him to feel anything as she approaches her own death. Though we know the outcome, Advocate is suspenseful and something of a page-turner. It is also written with great compassion and courage. It approaches a shameful period in history with open eyes and it doesn’t spare those who, through their words, or through action or inaction, contributed to making a human tragedy more painful and devastating than it had to be.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
icolford | May 23, 2020 |
In Just Beneath My Skin Darren Greer crams a lot into very few pages. This short novel tells the story of Jake McNeil's return to his home town of North River, Nova Scotia after spending time living and working in Halifax. When Jake moved away he left his son Nathan in the care of the boy's mother Carla, an abusive, angry, unreliable drunk. Guilt has forced him to return in order to take Nathan with him to Halifax, where he hopes to provide his son with a better life. The story is told in two alternating first-person streams, one narrated by Jake and the other by Nathan. Jake's narrative is split between the present and his past, which includes harrowing details about his mother's death from cancer and his sister's death by drowning. Jake's life has been painful and he wants desperately to do the right thing, but by returning to North River he exposes himself to the senseless drug-fueled rancor of low-life former friends who did nothing with their lives and resent him for trying to make something of himself. There is an atmosphere of lurking menace hanging over the action that intensifies as the story nears its conclusion because in order to get back to Halifax Jake is forced to make decisions that lead him straight into danger. In Greer's depiction life in a Maritime small town is unremittingly grim. People live without hope and numb themselves to their plight with drugs, booze, or religion. But there is truth in these pages and Jake's tragedy is profound.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
icolford | Oct 27, 2014 |
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.… (mer)
1 rösta
Flaggad
brocade | 4 andra recensioner | Oct 1, 2013 |

Priser

Statistik

Verk
7
Medlemmar
99
Popularitet
#191,538
Betyg
3.8
Recensioner
8
ISBN
16

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