Customer Reviews

Dancing Naked

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VanWagoner is incredible. It is difficult to believe that this is a first novel from this gifted writer. Wisdom and insight like that found in "Dancing Naked" are uncommon in a first novel. Rather they come after many novels which were merely preludes to a masterpiece. VanWagoner has hit the ground running. Rarely does an author capture the power of despair and the temperment of true love like VanWagoner does. I have never seen the world through another person's eyes quite like I did when reading this book. I was amazed at the disturbing images it evoked and thrilled with the subtle beauty that came simply from words on a page. The symbolism runs deep in "Dancing Naked." This book will stay with me for a very long time and I have a feeling that I will revisit it often, gaining new insights each time I dare to explore its pages. I am anxious to see what VanWagoner does for an encore.

"Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner has written the first great Mormon novel," according to Martin Naparsteck in the Salt Lake Tribune. Tracing the life and problems of Terry Walker, a mathematics professor at the University of Utah, Dancing Naked is "about the way love manifests itself and how it can turn on us and be our enemy when we don't understand ourselves. It is also about secrecy and distrust and what they do to relationships," said the author, Van Wagoner. The main character's son dies early in the novel by accidental(?) hanging in the family bathroom, the first instance of "dancing naked" in the book. His son's revealed homosexuality, causes Walker to struggle with the results of his own religious upbringing at the hands of his father, a violently homophobic Mormon. Paul Swenson, in the Salt Lake Observor, declared the book to be a "love story, with moments of peace and hilarity, but ... also dense and painful." The appeal of the book extends beyond those in Utah or with Utah or Mormon ties. Anyone with a gay friend or family member will find resonant chords here. And, as with all fine literature, the wordcraft and the insight into human nature speaks to us all

After having read two chapters of this book, I summarized what I'd been reading for my husband and my daughter. As the subject matter included bigotry, homosexulity, and suicide, they responded as though I were recounting a shocking thriller. Having finished this book, I appreciate the strong characters and the depth of the issues including the effect of our histories, the necessity of the forgivness of the self and others, the need for perspective, and above all love. Don't dismiss it as a thriller. It's lovely. Congraulations Mr. Van Wagoner!

I loved this book. It features a not very likable protagonist, Terry Walker: his rampant homophobia is expressed in frequent letters to the newspaper. You have to sympathize with him, however, because his father was much worse. Terry's father, his model for male behavior, was a homophobe and abusive hypocrite. His father's heroic military service was entirely made up, and his anger toward his son was not tempered by love.

Terry loves his son Blake and hates his father, but only knows his father's modes of relating to a son. -- anger and hate. Early in the novel Blake commits suicide in a manner that leaves no doubt of his sexual orientation, and this forces the very resistant Terry to examine his life.

The book is very well crafted. Terry's uncertain progress toward self-knowledge is skillfully interwoven with the stories of his years with his father and mother and the early years of his own marriage. This might sound confusing but in the hands of this author it is not. Buy it and read it.

I note that this book is #1 in Utah. This compelling story deals with family and societal issues that are universal and should make it the number one book in any region. I found the book to be moving and readable and extremely relevant. The author is to be commended for his ability to create characters that we care so much about and for his compelling insights.

I have been looking for a book about the Mormon culture that would be interesting to non-Mormons. I think that the Mormon culture is fascinating in its idiosyncrasies, and I have been excited for a long time at the prospect of someone writing a book about its idiosyncrasies.

Most Mormon literature that I have read is very preachy in nature. The climaxes have been that the protagonist realizes that the Mormonism is for him or her, and the main struggle has been about whether or not Mormonism is true. While this can be a good subject, it is entirely overused in Mormon fiction.

This book is different. It is a book about the complex relations between Terry-the disturbed mathematics professor, Blake-his gay son, and Terry Sr.-his homophobic ultra-religious father. That is why I say that it defines a new genre, because it is a well-written book about relationships inside of a Mormon culture, not about a book about Mormonism.

He has a very good vocabulary, and is very good for a first time novelist.

The following paragraph of criticisms made a very minor impact for my appreciation of this well-written book:

If you don't like flashbacks in books, then this book is not for you. The book is mostly a series of flashbacks. It contains flashbacks within flashbacks, and contains an every-other-paragraph-is-a-flashback scene. Also, the narrator uses words and phrases that are unique to the Mormon culture such as "beseechingly," "murmurous," and "bear testimony to this truth." The use of these phrases is not extreme, but may make this book a little hard for a non-Mormon to read. And even though the characters in the book that are gay are very complex, the discussion of the nature of homosexuality is relatively simplistic.

Also, if you are offended by swear words or by frank discussions about homosexuality and stories of a sensual nature, then you will be offended by this book.

Terry Walker is an even-tempered, successful mathematics professor, comfortable with the order and predictability of his personal world. He likes the kind of life he lives in a quiet Salt Lake City subdivision. He masks the occasional traumas of life and death with the calculation of numbers. But control is illusive. His fifteen-year-old-son Blake is a sensitive lad who has refused to eat meat since the time he could walk and harbors a secret that he keeps from his father. Terry Walker's inability to accept what he knows and does not know about his son, what he possibly could never accept, exacts a high price. At the threshold of insanity, Terry wages war against a powerful inner chaos. In Dancing Naked, author Robert Van Wagoner takes the reader beyond a simple foretelling to beneath the psyche of an ordinary man to a place of extraordinary engagement for both the man and the reader..

Imagine watching a train-wreck develop in super-slow motion, cringing helplessly as the carnage unfolds.... and then see survivors miraculously step forth from the wreckage, seemingly unhurt.... Did everyone survive? The survivors look remarkably whole; did they suffer serious internal injuries that we can't see?

That powerful ambivalence of disaster and miracle is what this book felt like. This novel is tragicomedy (in the classical sense) at its finest: the simlultaneous expression of despair & hope, of love & loathing, of vulnerability & self-assuredness.

I discovered this gem by serendipitous mistake, as I was searching the internet for anecdotal accounts of Mormon gays struggling to cope with the stigma and societal pressures of the Mormon sub-culture. But it would be a mistake to pigeonhole this novel as being about gay issues, or about Mormon society. Those two factors are merely contextual, providing one possible backdrop among many for the author's probing examination of the complexities of family relationships. The real topics here include: the need for acceptance and validation from those we love, the emotional pathologies that can interfere with the expression of love, and how one's experiences can create an internal push & pull of (un)willingness to share oneself with those whom we share love and friendship).

This is evocative of Sophocles' works, or Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman -- but it would be an unfair oversimplification to categorize this as classical tragedy; like the parable of Job (or Voltaire's Candide), the main characters here have a chance to rebuild and regroup from their disaster, and make a new life of hope and love: Dancing Naked is a modern allegory of the mythical Phoenix.

The main character's wife tantalized the reader with a contrasting sense of empowerment, counteracting the novel's frequent tone of despair with a pertinacious sense of hope, of emotional growth.

If you're the type of reader who wants simple resolution with unambiguous closure from a novel, you won't find that here. But life is complex and ambiguous, and this story encompasses the rich emotional diversity of real experience in a way few novels have achieved.

For a first book, Dancing Naked is excellent. In fact, I'd say it would be excellent for a 2nd, 3rd or 4th too.

This story is about a father's difficultly in accepting his son and his son's differences (whether those are the son's homosexuality or even just his 'sensitivity') and ultimately dealing with the poignant results of that rejection. The father's desire for a ordered world is never found.

I loved this book, to put it simply. As a gay Mormon born outside of Utah but having lived there for 5 years, the characters, who are very well developed, rang true. Only one did not seem particularly "Mormon" to me, Terry's father (the father of the main character). I've met many a homophobic Mormon men in my 20 years as a Mormon, but none seem to fit this character. A small point.

Yet, this book is more than just a book about Mormons and homosexuality, like any good literature it is about something universal, set in a very specific situation, of Mormon Utah. It is about parenthood and the struggle to accept our children when they 'disorder' our world.

I agree with an earlier assessment, it is rough in parts, mainly the flashbacks are a bit heavy at times, but overall the writing is excellent, the story enthralling and the characters well written.

I really hope this book gains a wide readership.

Trey

P.S. As to the one review with a "Brodie" recommendation, seems like the reviewer has an ulterior motive in the review. The book does portray Mormons quite well and relatively balanced (but it can never be a broad portrayal, it was not meant to be at all, the reviewer missed the point of fiction).

Rob Van Wagoner is an artist. He is a master of his craft, and with this novel he has painted a painful, dense picture of human failings. Some of the past reviews have mentioned that one must be LDS or know a homosexual to appreciate this novel, and I need to dispel that myth. This book, like all great literature, uses these ideas as a backdrop to explore deeper themes that include isolation, acceptance, and tolerance. Having studied under Van Wagoner, I can say that he is a man whose work is focused on strong themes and always streches the reader's limits. This approach to writing forces the reader to open their mind and look deeper into the situations with which they are faced with in their own lives. Take a chance on this book. You won't be let down.