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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
slow-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“Go out dancing tonight, my dear, and go home with someone. And if the love doesn’t last beyond the morning, then know I love you.”
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Dancer from the Dance pins its focus predominantly on two characters : Sutherland, an eclectic hedonist, and boy-wonder Malone who is on a quest for love in New York City’s gay circuit. Examining the nature of “love” in this environment and for the community of men who participate in it, Holleran explores beauty, age, and intention in this “novel-within-a-novel.”
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Mesmeric prose vivid enough to outshine the story itself; Holleran’s characters act as compelling caricatures of stereotypical gay archetypes. I adored the epistolary sections which had me floored from the jump. While I appreciated being transported to and experiencing this particular era, I’m unsure that the story being told about Malone and Sutherland is clear and consistent throughout the novel. To be honest, I could have been sidetracked by the language itself.
Serving Great Expectations with Sutherland an anti-Havisham and Malone a Pip entering into “society” as it was. Something deeply depressing brewing between the lines which I am sure will only continue to bubble as the book sits.
3.5-4. Enjoyed her, would recommend, probably won’t read again. Score may inflate with time!
______________________________________________
Dancer from the Dance pins its focus predominantly on two characters : Sutherland, an eclectic hedonist, and boy-wonder Malone who is on a quest for love in New York City’s gay circuit. Examining the nature of “love” in this environment and for the community of men who participate in it, Holleran explores beauty, age, and intention in this “novel-within-a-novel.”
______________________________________________
Mesmeric prose vivid enough to outshine the story itself; Holleran’s characters act as compelling caricatures of stereotypical gay archetypes. I adored the epistolary sections which had me floored from the jump. While I appreciated being transported to and experiencing this particular era, I’m unsure that the story being told about Malone and Sutherland is clear and consistent throughout the novel. To be honest, I could have been sidetracked by the language itself.
Serving Great Expectations with Sutherland an anti-Havisham and Malone a Pip entering into “society” as it was. Something deeply depressing brewing between the lines which I am sure will only continue to bubble as the book sits.
3.5-4. Enjoyed her, would recommend, probably won’t read again. Score may inflate with time!
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Restless and decadent. Lush and immersive prose. So much charisma and honesty. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Though it’s a product of its time, so the perspective is very white, cis, and 1970s. Tread carefully.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Reading the end of this book while listening to Jeff Buckely's "I Know It's Over" was a really bad idea.
So, like, 3 years after Garth tells me to read this, I finally get around to it (bc I need a book published in my birth year for like two different reading challenges, lol)
This feels so much like a window into a very different time, that it's almost a lost culture of New York City in the 1970s with the all-night discos and the legendary Fire Island parties since so many of this generation of queer people, particularly queer men, were gone within 10 years of publication. But also in the patter of speech and how men related to each other. (And then I did the actual math and the action of the book is 50 years old and some of the characters are emulating the Hollywood Golden Age actresses of the 30s, which would have been almost 50 years prior, so wow)
Also the little thow-away line at the end of the book that despite the space the Scene takes up in the queer community, there are others out there who are not part of the Scene and that's a revelation to one of the narrators (this is essentially a book within a frame narrative, that I actually forgot about in the middle)
So thanks Garth, for telling me to read this.
This feels so much like a window into a very different time, that it's almost a lost culture of New York City in the 1970s with the all-night discos and the legendary Fire Island parties since so many of this generation of queer people, particularly queer men, were gone within 10 years of publication. But also in the patter of speech and how men related to each other. (And then I did the actual math and the action of the book is 50 years old and some of the characters are emulating the Hollywood Golden Age actresses of the 30s, which would have been almost 50 years prior, so wow)
Also the little thow-away line at the end of the book that despite the space the Scene takes up in the queer community, there are others out there who are not part of the Scene and that's a revelation to one of the narrators (this is essentially a book within a frame narrative, that I actually forgot about in the middle)
So thanks Garth, for telling me to read this.
emotional
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes