Diahanna Aurora Hampton’s novel Find Me At The Disco contains many elements that I love in fiction: a coming-of-age story, a deeply flawed character grappling with cultural pressures and big existential questions, and a strong sense of time and place (landlines, anyone? I didn’t realize how much I’d missed those!).
It also features a bi protagonist: Liza Collins. Set in New York City in the late 1970s, Find Me At The Disco follows Liza as she returns to New York after graduating from high school abroad to reunite with her father, Will. She plans to take a gap year before college to gain some experience in the magazine industry and spend quality time with her father, who has always loved her from afar. Well, that’s what she’d like to do, if he can make time for her while juggling his relationship with his new fiancée, Cynthia, and the demands of his struggling camera business, Focal.
What Liza doesn’t know is that Will is carrying a deep secret about Liza’s mother, who died when Liza was an infant. Furthermore, his engagement to Cynthia, who’s the daughter of one of Focal’s board members, is murky at best. Haunted by the things he hasn’t told Liza, Will decides to come clean when she arrives in New York. The longer he waits, though, the more hurt Liza will be — but if he tells her too soon, will he scare her away? Told in alternating points of view, the novel follows both Liza and Will as they try to return to the close relationship they once shared. Will they be able to reconnect? Or will their secrets keep them at arm’s length?
It’s difficult to talk about Find Me At The Disco without CONTENT WARNINGS. These include, most notably: homophobia, threat of violence and sexual assault, and suicide. Though this review will only mention these elements, they’re all critical to the plot of the book. You’ve been warned!
In terms of bi representation, Liza dates a woman for the first time during the course of the novel, after dating multiple men. The text itself does not use the word “bisexual,” and much of Liza’s sexual awakening happens off the page, so Find Me At The Disco doesn’t necessarily feel like a coming-out story; instead, her relationship with another woman unfolds naturally after multiple chapters of flirting and foreshadowing, and so Liza is readily accepting of her first sapphic relationship.
Though the novel doesn’t overly focus on Liza’s coming out, it does detail experiences with homophobia and street harassment, both before and after Liza begins dating a woman. These scenes occur as Liza’s friendship circle expands and she begins hanging out with a group of queer characters. These moments give Liza a window into the queer experience before she is in a queer relationship herself.
Liza is a deeply flawed character, and much of the story hinges on how easily she caves to peer pressure — much like her father, who caved to cultural pressures years earlier. This creates an interesting dynamic between them as they struggle to connect in the present: they’re more similar than they realize. These similarities keep them caught in a cycle of almost connecting.
Find Me at the Disco focuses on a few of these “almosts” — over the course of the novel, Liza finds out that she’s half black, leaving her feeling not quite white and not quite black. The metaphor extends to her bisexuality as well, which mirrors this, though the novel does not overly focus on her sexuality. Furthermore, Liza is also confronted by an older man from her past, and her interactions with him occupy another in-between: she’s not quite a child, but she’s not quite an adult, either. In this way, the novel echoes itself across its varied plot points, lending a cohesion to the overall story.
I loved many of the premises in Find Me At The Disco. That said, it was difficult at times to root for Liza, in part because there was very little interiority; I was often unsure of Liza’s motives. Characters sometimes appeared out of nowhere, including Alpert Harper, who was allegedly a formative part of Liza’s high school life but was not mentioned at all, even in passing, until Chapter 15. Other characters disappeared suddenly, like Frank — he kept appearing in the first part of the novel, which made me think he was important, but then he was gone. I struggled similarly with Will, who kept lying outright or by omission despite repeated epiphanies in which he told himself, “No, really, it’s time to come clean — for real this time.”
Without spoiling too much of either Will or Liza’s stories, some of Liza’s decisions, particularly around Bobby and Jennifer, frustrated me — which is, perhaps, the point in a novel about social pressures. They make us act in ways that don’t fully make sense and therefore escape neat explanation. That said, I personally would’ve loved to see some character growth for both protagonists before the very haunting ending. It’s not for the faint of heart, but the final scene was one of the most impactful scenes of the novel, for me.