Dance Prone is a novel about trauma, violence, and music, set during the 80s hardcore punk scene and in the present day. Neus Bauen are a post-punk band touring America, with frenzy and drink and drug fuelled gigs and hours in their tour bus. When one of their members is sexually assaulted and another suffers a gunshot wound, things start to alter for the band. And as the decades pass, the band members grow older, but are still haunted by trauma and by the violence that happened during their time on the road and subsequently.

The novel is written in a fluid style that reflect the protagonist's state of mind, with memory loss due to trauma, and the narrative moves between 1985 and the present day. This makes it often quite confusing to read, with characters not always distinct from each other, or not really described so they just become names to forget. Maybe this adds to the effect of the novel and the haziness surrounding some of the events, but it makes for a tough reading experience, taking a long time to even work out the main characters and their relationships. The dark subject matter provides a reflection on music scenes, violence, and the way that these scenes are reconstructed in memory, but this and the style make it quite unrelenting reading material.

For fans of books about fictional bands, this one brings depth and complication, looking at the trauma lurking behind the vision of a small band in a classic music scene. However, it had the issue that some novels about specific scenes or cultural moments do where they feel like an onslaught of characters, moments, and references that can be difficult to follow.

Dance Prone is unlike anything I’ve read before. The novel focuses on an indie band called Neus Bauen. Half of the book focuses on the traumatic events that happened to two members of the band in the 80s. The second half takes place in 2019 and focuses on the repercussions of this trauma, as the members of the group reflect on the events which have ultimately shaped their lives.

The prose was very fluid but often vague. Events blurred into one another, setting the scene of a time during which Conrad – our protagonist – was almost constantly drunk and drugged as well dealing with some difficult realities.

This is an interesting way to stage the novel and, whilst no doubt it was meant to reflect Conrad’s addled state of mind, it was perhaps not the best narrative choice. It requires you to focus all your energy just to follow the narrative, which reads like snippets of memories constantly blurring into one another.

The novel didn’t really delve into the backstory of many characters and at the end I still didn’t have a sense of who many of them ‘were’. Everything felt very abstract, from the characters to the places they went. It was almost like the author got so caught up in creating prose that was colourful and flowing that it actually lacked any kind of detail at all. It was hard to really ‘get into’ the story.

Perhaps this book would be more ideal for someone who was more familiar to the 80s music ‘scene’ as I often felt at times like I was exploring an alien world which was only half-formed.

That being said there were some interesting characters (which had the potential to be explored further). This novel also explored some really dark and difficult themes which it handled well. I was sufficiently intrigued by the events that happened in the 80s that I kept reading to the end, and I liked Conrad as our narrator. There is a real complexity to his character and you can feel the torment, anger and hurt that rages inside him all the way through this novel.

I think this novel might be enjoyed more by those who have an interest in the 80s music scene. Nonetheless, it is likeable and definitely has positive attributes. It will keep you interested until the end.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in an exchange for an honest review. Thank you NetGalley and Picador for the opportunity to read and review this book.