Joanna Cockerline's ​Still

Reviewed by Micaela ​Cárcamo

(Porcupine's Quill, 2025)

Still, by Joanne Cockerline, is a new novel published by Porcupine’s Quill in September 2025. This novel tells Kayla’s story of surviving on the streets as a sex worker and homeless woman. We accompany her through her days and nights, through detailed narration, timestamps, and glimpses of her past, as we have the chance to piece together who she is and how she came to be.

We jump into the story as Little Zoe, one of Kayla’s closest friends, goes missing.  While Kayla makes it her mission to find her unaccounted-for friend, everyone else is not asking the right questions. Kayla navigates the streets in the midst of an opioid crisis in Kelowna, Canada, and we join her compassionate and compelling journey in discovering the whereabouts of her friend and finding her true self, while inviting us to do the same. Going on the journey with Kayla, Cockerline invites us to explore and ask the questions for ourselves. What really matters in life, and how do we search for our own place?

Cockerline explores a great sense of community through this novel. We learn how characters care for each other on the streets, “From her street family, her family, she had learned how much it meant to give what you were capable of giving”. Portraying care and connection between characters, Cockerline shows deep bonds reflected through the complexity of her richly developed characters. A search for identity is explored by Kayla, who she wants to be and what she wants to do with the rest of her life. Facing the disappearance of her friend, she is forced to confront fear and the unknown, as she begins to contemplate her own life, mistakes, and choices. This narration from an often-underrepresented perspective is compelling and immerses readers in the streets of Kelowna, reflecting on the search for one's place in life: “Experience, for her, was more like a collage of pictures, overlapping and moving, details not always clear, but some standing out so intensely they burned more brightly than the rest”. The short chapters, which jump in time, keep the pace quick and steady, all in the right direction. As the story goes along, immersed in Kelowna, it feels almost impossible to put the book down. While Kayla opens up many questions, finding out the answers with her and for us is what drives the story forward.

Cockerline shares complex characters that, in their own ways, make their marks in Kayla’s life. As unique as each of them is, their reliability makes the book more engaging and comfortable. In a world of homelessness and sex workers, being able to connect with the characters and stray away from the big labels such as “homeless” and “sex worker” invites you to see them in a different light and connect with them for yourself. They all share new perspectives on day-to-day things that not only make you reflect on how each of us handles some of these things, but most importantly, get us talking about the small things. It’s in the small things where we can connect and start reflecting without it feeling overwhelming and daunting.

The world Cockerline shares is one filled with hope and resilience, as well as despair and injustice. This novel sheds light on the dark alley of the human soul, where some might get lost. Cockerline allows readers to step into a world that’s vividly beautiful and painful, but without the weight of a moralizing undertone. We as readers are invited to step into that world and wonder for ourselves what really matters. Cockerline encourages us to draw conclusions on our own and reflect on what those ultimately mean for who we are and who we want to be: “I don't doubt that the darkness is out there—but the brightness is coming back”. This book, for me, was not only a page turner but also a tool to help me ask myself the right questions and be forced to sometimes look at things from a different perspective. Cockerline does an outstanding job at sending the right message and giving Kayla a story worth the while with a warm hug. I hope you take the chance and join Kayla’s journey for yourself. 

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​Micaela Cárcamo is a writer and editor in Creative Writing and Publishing at Sheridan College. As an editor, she has worked on a memoir and translated for Grafos y Maquinaciones S.A.C. in Peru, and is currently working as Prose Editor for B222 Journal in Canada. As a writer, Micaela focuses on nonfiction, exploring themes of her Peruvian heritage, her upbringing, and her newfound cultural exchanges and experiences as an international student living in Canada.