Book: Death of a Disco Dancer by David Clark

Title: Death of a Disco Dancer
Author: David Clark
Enjoyment Rating: 9/10
Referral: I've heard lots of buzz about this book and was curious to see if the book lived up to the hype (it does!)
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 34

In the hierarchy of fiction, at the very bottom is the badly written book that is hard to read. We've all read books like this-- they're boring or the characters don't work or the plot just makes no sense at all and the writing is choppy or overly descriptive or poorly edited. Those are bad, bad books. Then there are the books that are badly written or edited, but the story is entertaining enough for a reader to keep going, although if that reader is me, she might hide the book inside of something more literary or refrain from bringing it out in a public place. I'd say a fair majority of mass market fiction falls into this category (think your Dan Browns and John Grishams or Stephenie Meyers). Then there are the boring "literary" books-- the raw vegetables, the bran cereals of literature. They're the books you're assigned to read in school-- the ones where you know the author is trying to impress you with his or her brilliance and you know you should read them and think that you must be dumb for not enjoying them very much. And then, at the very top of the literary hierarchy, there are the entertaining works of literary fiction. I read enough books that I feel confident in saying that this category is the one most authors strive for, but very few attain. In Death of a Disco Dancer, David Clark's first novel, he shoots right to the top of the hierarchy.

The main narrative of Death of a Disco Dancer tells the story of Todd Whitman, an eleven-year-old Mormon kid living in Mesa, Arizona, whose grandmother, suffering from dementia recently moved in with his family. In the daytime, Todd's life is like most eleven-year-old kids on the cusp of graduating from Primary and going to junior high-- he's consumed by his first crush, and by the social scene of keeping up with two older siblings. At night, when everyone else is asleep, Granny likes to visit Todd's bedroom, where she proclaims her love for the Dancer (John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever), teaches him how to dance, and relives her past.

The secondary narrative takes place in the present time and shows Whitman, now an adult, working through the waning days of his own mother's life, which provides a nice, subtle reinforcement of how patterns cycle in families, and also puts the events of 1981 into relief as Whitman looks back at them from a distance of 30 years.

Clark is able to do something that few authors have achieved so far-- his book is a book about Mormons but not necessarily for a Mormon audience. He talks about Mormon elements in a familiar way, but while the book is about subjects that are central to the Mormon experience (eternal families, repentance, secrets, coming of age) they're presented in a universal way. Todd feels older than eleven to me, at least based on what I see going on with my own eleven-year-old. I would have found his thoughts and concerns more believable as a ninth grader than as a seventh grader, unless Clark acknowledges early on that Todd is an unusually precocious eleven-year-old (or else a 40-something looking back on his experiences at eleven). There are some anachronistic elements, Elmo didn't exist in 1981, for example, but overall the book feels tight and well-edited. It's rich and complex and totally compelling. I read the 300+ page book in less than a day, and not because I had to, but because I wanted more. I hope Clark gives us more.