Reviews

Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran

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haslerts's review against another edition

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5.0

This feels absolutely essential

windupboy's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

djrezzyrez's review against another edition

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4.0

I really relate to the review by someone named Mark also on this page. “I waffled between liking it and appreciating it.”

I’m glad that this book exists as a text describing what life felt like for a certain group of queer people in New York at a certain time, how it depicted without definitive judgment what it meant to indulge so deeply in sex, drugs, and dancing as a means to assuage (or in spite of) a feeling that they would be alone forever, and perhaps uniquely alone as queer men.

I found parts of it relatable, and I’ve seen people play on the edges of the spiral that the narrator describes characters teeter on the edge of, but I also know so many other queer people who exist outside of that scene/interact with said scene differently.

In that sense, I really appreciated the last few pages, for how they zoom out and remind the reader how many other queer folks there are, and how many ways in which we can be connected to each other.

bookiepanda's review against another edition

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1.0

This book broke my brain in a way that I was reading it and not a single word made sense or stayed in my brain. Those 250 pages felt like 500 and throughout the whole time, I felt confused and lost. I didn't understand the plot or the characters.

In a way, I can see why people may like it but it's just not the book for me.

thehommeboii's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I really wanted to love Dancer from the Dance, but ultimately feel somewhat indifferent about it. I'm not sure if it was the quality of the writing or the story itself that I found unsettling, but the characters and the gay scene depicted by Holleran felt immensely shallow - whatever pain and yearning for love were present in these men was masked and heavily overshadowed by an unexpectedly frequent discussion of penis size that ultimately makes the gay scene in 1970s New York feel like a poison of one's own choosing, and, consequently, our characters less deserving of pity. Perhaps like Malone, Dancer resembles a flower of immense beauty that is condemned not to ever bloom, so much potential that ultimately is left wasted. At least, it's reassuring to know gay dating has always been this bad (although of course, I wouldn't wish to bear the difficulties of being gay then).

He wrote of the fact that for the first time he had used his mouth for something other than those two blameless functions - speech and the ingestion of food - and that now he had profaned it utterly. Those lips, that throat, which were stained with milk, and apples, bread, and life-giving things, had been soiled beyond redemption now.

Little wonder that he wandered in these ghostly places late summer nights: He was half-waiting to be born. Having vanished from his former life, having shed his previous self with the suits he had left behind in a basement in Washington, he was a ghost, in fact, waiting to come to life through love. He fell in love with people he did not know how to meet. He began carrying around with him the momentary faces of men seen in restaurants, on street-corners, in the subways, and fed on their imagined loves as a roach feeds on crumbs. He knew from the looks on faces he surprised by looking up, that he too was being stored in other human hearts. That he might have fallen victim to the great homosexual disease - the sanctity of the face seen and never spoken to...

Update 6/14/2024: Previously rated 3.5 stars; downgraded to 3.25 stars.
Update 10/13/2024: Previously rated 3.25 stars; downgraded to 2.75 stars.

craig_knox's review against another edition

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3.0

The themes in this book are what kept me reading, rather than the plot. The plot was… hectic (deliberately so) but I found it distracting at times. Maybe that’s the brilliance of it? The themes and questions it raises on love and sex and ageing and queer culture, despite being firmly rooted in the 70s, feel timeless. Like all good books I came away questioning my own life. However, it was a hard read at times and the intricacies of the detail meant it lagged in places. Solid 3 stars.