This was a classic I had read in college, but it was great to revisit it... even if it is a little dated.

Malone is a young man looking for love in New York’s emerging gay scene. He meets Sutherland, the “campy quintessential queen”, and recounts their adventures.

I saw someone refer to this book as “the gay Gatsby”, and that feels like an apt description. If you enjoy The Great Gatsby, I recommend giving this book a go! This is definitely a different book from most books out there, and I don’t think it will be for everyone, but if the blurb intrigues you, check it out.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

I remember reading this back in the day, and revisiting it in audio is a real treat. I'm not familiar with the narrator, David Pittu, but he does an absolutely lovely job with Andrew Holleran's classic, Dancer From the Dance.

Mr. Holleran captures some of the sensations I remember from New York City in the early 80's. There truly was no place like it. The characters, the clubs, just hanging around with friends the parks. Road trips to the beach! There was a unique kinship during that time, and I can only imagine it was similar a few years earlier. I don't have to say what a difference the 90's made, and then with the onset of social media... well, nothing's been even close to the same since.

This is a true classic, and I highly recommend Dancer From the Dance.

First, the writing was good and flowed well. Second, the narrator was good. I was unsure who was, actually, narrating the story. Is it one of the characters presented or an unknown character writing about what he observed. This is part of my problem with this read. I, also, found it hard to understand how they were all able to live the lifestyle portrayed, the drugs, the clothes, the traveling, but no one seemed to have any means of income. ,I felt,that is some places the graphic details were a bit too much.

Not sure if I would recommend his book to friends, but it did have some good parts. Like I first stated the writing flowed well. I guess I didn't read the prefce well enough to know what this book would be about.

I appreciate this post-Stonewall era novel is now available in audiobook format. While not my favorite novel ever, it does provide colorful and detailed stories of parties, people, and situations within the NYC gay scene. However the racism and bigotry did not age well.

Sincere thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for an advanced listener copy in exchange for an honest review.

I laughed so many times reading this beautifully written book. Why did I take so long to read this? Gay New York in the 1970's post Stonewall riots and pre-AIDS crisis. The novel tells the story of a generation. It is lyrical, funny, sad, and the story of a way of life that today we look back with nostalgia. The Boston Globe called this novel a banquet. Thank you to NetGalley and Mcmillan Audio for the advance copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the advance audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Originally published in 1978, this novel celebrates 1970s gay life in New York, the time between Stonewall and AIDS.

Listening to this book was like traveling back in time. I had gay friends in college who frequented the baths, and I remember hearing about private parties like some of the themed parties described here. And I also knew people who died of AIDS in the years not long after. I do not know if a book like this could be written today, which makes its new release as an audiobook even more important.

The story itself is a snapshot of a world that could not exist today, a tale of a subculture that was soon to be decimated by AIDS, a world that few outside were fully aware of at the time. The characters are larger than life, and so are the parties. They are strangers in the night; they are looking for love. The life is all-consuming.

This review is about the audiobook, and the narrator, David Pittu, is brilliant. I am sorry that I have not seen any of his acting. I shall definitely keep an ear out for more of his narrations.

Truly phenomenal. Some of the most vivid, descriptive, and brilliant world building I have ever read. I had heard great things about Holleran and he did not disappoint. The accuracy he writes with it is breathtaking. It is evident he has not only lived through the 1970s of New York, but kept an up to date journal of his accounts too. Only fault is the details dragged on at times. Highly recommended for anyone looking for information and a story about queer history in this time and place and/or for anyone looking to read about “A Gay Gatsby”.

I feel like I am not at all the target demographic for this book. And because of that I kind of feel like I’m not sure how to review it.

I thought it was really good, I enjoyed listening to it, the narrator did a great job, I think. The voice he used for Sutherland really seemed to match with his description, very campy and over the top.

I’m absolutely fascinated by Malone, like everyone else in the book. His story is intriguing and heartbreaking and I wonder how much his story reflects the real lives of gay men in NYC in the 70s? I liked how the book ended, kind of leaving it up to the reader to decide what they think happened.

For this book having been written in the late 70s, I was surprised that there is very little that would be considered problematic these days. A bit of outdated (what would be considered racist today) language, but there was very little of it.

Slow, droopy narration takes the life and bite from this story. The story gets four stars, while the narration gets one.

Thanks to Netgalley and the published for an advance review copy of the audiobook.

At the time of first publication, many readers were so desperate for gay novels that weren’t pulp stroke fic that they lowered their standards. In this case, it shows.

The novel starts out badly in several ways. The framing device of the novel within a novel does not work and ensures a slow start. The first-person POV character who is omniscient, except when his omniscience stops being convenient to the story, may confuse or annoy readers. The novel includes a hilariously wrong description of Washington, D.C., and its Maryland suburbs.

The characters are uninspiring. Most of the people in that social set are power bottoms whose lives consist largely of dancing, doing drugs, and talking about penis size and who, except for penis size, are fungible. They also act like wind-up toys that do what the author wants, when the author wants it. They never show realistic human motivation but instead act merely to advance the story, let the author make a point, or hand-wave away issues of money.

Malone is the worst offender. He persistently and methodically does things to throw away what he claims to want, even as it breaks down the door to claim him, not once but twice, and meekly accepts a life that someone else told him was his lot.

This is a 2022 first-time-on-audio version of the classic 1978 gay male novel, Dancer From The Dance. I am not sure how long it's been since I first read this incredible book. I wasn't sure how well it would hold up. Or what I would think of it after all these decades. In a word: brilliant. It captures the adolescence of a particular group of gay male city dwellers basking in the new found freedoms of a post-Stonewall era, a decade before AIDS struck. The book's characters are hedonistic, the focus is particular to a certain subset of gay men who lived in major U.S. cities during the 1970's and either had looks, outrageous style, money, or both. Author Holleran writes about these men with a poetic brilliance rarely seen in modern literature. There's a reason this is part of the canon of must-read books from gay male authors of the 20th Century. Dancer From the Dance is full of longing, exploration, boredom, experimentation, and even vulgarity. It's raw and rough in places, bitchy and judgemental, gorgeous and intellectual. David Pittu's narration carries the listener through to the very end. Simply lovely.

Holleran is a tremendous writer, and the novel is both hysterical and harrowing, and presumably groundbreaking at the time of publication in 1978. The characters are unmoored by lust and desperate to be young.

I loved hearing this book about gay men in Manhattan in the 1970’s, prior to AIDS. It was a wonderfully decadent lifestyle. The baths, elaborate parties in the Hamptons, money, money and more money. I enjoyed the audio book, however two sections went out during the reading, and for quite a while. I knew this book would end with someone’s death. It had to happen with the lifestyle, going continuously. The book was originally written in 1979, and the manner in which it was written is perfect of those years. Thank you to MacMillan audio and NetGalley for the audio version of this book.

*I received this book for free through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Tedious, flat characters, & no plot.

The narrator was decent. My main tiff with this was the language. I don't like all the graphic details. It spoke of the following: smelling the gas of someone's bowels (saying it was better than Chanel), painting cunts, & a lot about men's privates. There were never-ending descriptions of NY. Maybe when this was first released, it worked better for that audience. All-in-all, I could not get invested in this.

Thank you, Macmillan Audio~