The recent BBC drama series Pose was a joyful reminder of the mid-80s voguing scene, an underground efflorescence of creativity in New York’s queer community. In riotous club nights called balls, rival houses, each led by a “Mother”, competed to show off outrageous costumes and moves parodying film stars and models. The final arbiter was the vogue caller, who thought up the sartorial themes and provided the vicious commentary accompanying their efforts. Taking a more sombre tone, Niven Govinden uses these balls as a backdrop to a story of civil disobedience and political resistance.

In the opening section, a group of Mothers are staging a silent protest outside City Hall. Use of the first person plural turns them into a kind of Greek chorus. In their forties and fifties, feeling around 80 in gay years, they describe how they took in young men who had been rejected by their parents and community, fed, clothed and moulded them into the peacocks and divas who strut by night, gaining kudos for their houses. But their “gurls”, some of whom work the streets, have been going missing and the protest seems the only way to force the police out of their inaction.

Teddy, the protagonist, has graduated from one of the houses to a regular job in the city, and he becomes the Mothers’ supporter, go-between and conduit to power. At the heart of the novel are the twin concepts of reality and “realness”, an artificiality better than the real thing that is the highest accolade of the vogue walk. Reality is biological mothers rejecting their sons because of their sexuality; realness is the nurturing, scolding Mothers. Realness points out the hypocrisy of a city where the police neither protect nor serve, and public services are extended only to those deemed worthy of them.

Teddy’s motivation is his hopeless love for Sherry, one of the missing. The police have forgotten the victims, but it’s strange that the plot does too, relegating them to McGuffin status. Govinden’s decision to favour style over storyline could also be seen as a form of realness. He gives us nine pages of the vogue caller’s categories: “Category is: drunk tank realness … Category is: TV evangelicals on the run realness.” They are amusing, but reading eight pages of his injunction to “Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk” is less so. Teddy never really comes to life in his long passages of reported thought, and when this sensible, cautious character makes the catastrophic mistake that up-ends the protest, it seems more like a desperate way out of a plot impasse than a twist.

• This Brutal House is published by Dialogue (RRP £14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.