After revisiting the book over the past week, I can see this isn't one I'm likely to pick up again even if it is a book I'm not likely to forget. There may be some symbolism with that character, an alter ego for the author, fading into obscurity in deep red Florida. It's true, as some have pointed out, that the narrator perhaps typifies a certain breed of middle-class white gay man, allowed to approach old age on his own terms.
This can be a depressing read and some readers are understandably left cold. Instead, it is a perfect refinement of Holleran's own approach - a memoir with just enough fiction to elide that label. In terms of style, there is nothing innovative here. Although billed as a novel, it reads as a collection of related stories, repeating at times several key events and revolving around the narrator's friendship with the older Earl, beautifully told in the novella-like chapter Hurricane Weather. Set in rural northern Florida, the theme is loneliness: and specifically an aging gay man's fear of dying alone. While Dancer from the Dance will likely remain his best known work, his latest may in fact be his best. Andrew Holleran has been quietly chronicling American gay life for more than 40 years. The near-universal praise for this book is deserved.
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