Sex, Death & Diane


Fiction - Social Issues
147 Pages
Reviewed on 09/15/2024
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    Book Review

Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite

Sex, Death & Diane by Dante revolves around the life of a girl named Sara, and her tumultuous coming of age through illness, loss, and the social construct of America in the 1980s. Sara's childhood was marked by her friendship with the rebellious Diane, who contrasted with Sara's cautious nature. Sara's leukemia diagnosis was badly managed by her parents but she found comfort with Diane at her home. After graduating from high school, Sara returns home from college on a break to heartbreaking news. Back in college, she is isolated as she manages a second tragedy, a problematic class assignment, accelerating technology, and the dizzying speed of rising figures like the polarizing Alan Sterling. Sara’s journey is embodied by her attempts to reconcile her personal trauma with her broader concerns about AIDS, media manipulation, and societal division, forcing deeper reflection on her own role and the implications of activism and critical thinking.

Dante’s Sex, Death & Diane is an interesting look at a unique period in history, homing in on one girl in an attempt to cover the trials of a diverse generation. My wife grew up in San Francisco at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, which is what drew me to the book. What's interesting and unexpected is that Dante draws an almost eerily relatable line that has some irony: for all of the technological advances, socially, we haven't kept up with that speed. In some ways, we are stuck in the same spot we were 40 years ago. Dante's style of writing is direct and simple, working more on telling us what is happening over the characters doing that, but they still do well at capturing the turmoil of Sara's life experiences. The book's strength really does lie in its raw, unflinching portrayal of the vast divide in ideologies and an unapologetically sharp social critique. Overall, this is a thoughtful body of work that is bluntly incisive and timely, and I think readers who enjoy socially driven literary fiction will find that here.