Dancing Like Nobody’s Watching: A Book Review
Set in the late 1980s, the novel carries the weight of
memory, but it’s a memory recalled through a 21st century lens
leading to a kind of literary dissonance. It’s a heavy novel dealing with
serious topics—heartbreak, friendships, lives lost, religious trauma, the shadow
of the growing AIDS crisis—even as it’s characters lose themselves and their
cares in the pounding rhythms of the house music of the decade.
Yet, for all its heaviness, the story is positive, powered
by hope—hope that it really does get better; that we can love one
another in truth and joy—the kind of hope that propelled Barrack Obama to the White
House, twice.
The prose is clean and sharp; it sings at times, like this evocative
passage speaking of helplessness, of yearning:
“It felt less like distance and more like a wall going
up, brick by unanswered call, brick by unanswered letter, leaving Jayson on the
outside, searching for a way in.”
One of my favorite passages in the book took me back to a
hospital room in the late 80s watching a friend die:
“Down the corridor, behind a pane of glass, Malik lay
motionless—eyes closed, a ventilator tube trailing from his mouth, surrounded
by wires and monitors that flickered like a distant storm.”
Other favorites are:
“With Darnell, everything had felt like performance—a new
role being tested for fit, all bravado and borrowed gestures. But Erik…Erik
didn’t seem to be traying at all. There was no costume, no script. Just
presence. Authentic. Whole. Where Darnell had been rehearsing, Erik simply was.”
“The visit with Mrs. Manning lingered like smoke in his lungs,
bitter and choking.
In the book’s afterword, Mr. Riddle mentions he began
writing this book in 1999. I look forward to reading his next novel and hope it
doesn’t take 27 years; the world needs more stories like this one.
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