The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin

The Night Listener

by Armistead Maupin

Gabriel Noone is a writer whose late night radio stories have brought him into the homes of millions. Noone is in the midst of a painful separation from his lover of ten years when a publisher sends him proofs of a remarkable book: the memoir of a sickly thirteen-year-old boy who suffered horrific sexual abuse at the hands of his parents.

Now living with his adoptive mother, Donna, Pete Lomax is not only a brave and gifted diarist but a devoted listener of Noone's show. When Noone phones the boy to offer encouragement, it soon becomes clear that Pete sees in this heartsick, middle-aged storyteller the loving father he's always wanted. Thus begins an extraordinary friendship that grows deeper only as the boy's health deteriorates, freeing Noone to unlock his innermost feelings.

Then, out of the blue, troubling new questions arise, exploding Noone's comfortable assumptions and causing his ordered existence to spin wildly out of control. As he walks a vertiginous line between truth and illusion, he is finally forced to confront all his relationships - familial, romantic and erotic.

As complex and hypnotically engrossing as the best of mysteries, The Night Listener is an astonishing tour de force that moves and challenges Maupin's readers as never before.

Reviewed by empressbrooke on

4 of 5 stars

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After reading the book, I'm not sure why the trailers for the movie tried to pass it off as a thriller - it's not creepy or scary or anything. It's a mind puzzle and a mystery, but I guess Hollywood thinks its audience won't enjoy something cerebral (they did the same thing with Stephen King's Secret Window; its advertising campaign puzzles me to this day).

The neatest thing about the book is that it's based on something that actually happened to the author. The copy of the book I have contains an article from The New Yorker that sums up the real-life story, which is pretty similar to the novel.

I'm not sure how I feel about the plot device thrown in during the afterword; in some ways, I feel like the story itself is complete enough without adding this new layer, and in other ways I feel like it folds right into the overall themes of the book.

I've never read Maupin's Tales of the City books, but I'm more inclined to now after seeing what a capable author he is. Even though the bulk of The Night Listener is made up of phone calls, it moves forward quickly and never stalls.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 2 August, 2008: Finished reading
  • 2 August, 2008: Reviewed