Product Description

"I'm a fabulist by trade," warns Gabriel Noone, a late-night radio storyteller, as he begins to untangle the skeins of his tumultuous life: his crumbling ten-year love affair, his disaffection from his Southern father, his longtime weakness for ignoring reality. Gabriel's most sympathetic listener is Pete Lomax, a thirteen-year-old fan in Wisconsin whose own horrific past has left him wise and generous beyond his years. But when this virtual father-son relationship is rocked by doubt, a desperate search for the truth ensues. Welcome to the complex, vertiginous world of The Night Listener....

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #338724 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 342 pages

From Amazon.com
Many years ago, when the first volume of Tales of the City was going to press, Christopher Isherwood compared its author's narrative gifts to those of Charles Dickens. This has proven to be the blurb of a lifetime, an ever-renewable currency appearing on almost all of Armistead Maupin's subsequent books. Yet it has held up well--Dickens's gentle satire and broad good humor live on in Maupin more than in any other English-speaking writer. The Night Listener is his most ambitious work to date. While not strictly autobiographical, the story does teasingly suggest correspondences to the author's own life in a way that will delight and frustrate his many fans. The main character, Gabriel Noone, is a professional storyteller who broadcasts roughly autobiographical sketches for a long-running PBS series, "Noone at Night," stories about people "caught in the supreme joke of modern life who were forced to survive by making families of their friends." When the novel opens, Gabriel is still reeling from the announcement that his much younger, longtime partner Jess (a.k.a. Jamie in the "Noone at Night" stories, and a.k.a. Terry Anderson, Maupin's real-life, much-younger partner, for those who like to track associations) wants to move into his own apartment and start dating other men. With the success of his HIV cocktail, Jess has exceeded his own life expectancy. Having prepared himself so well to die, he now needs to learn how to live again. To Gabriel's distress, Jess's new life involves leather, multiple piercings, and books on men's drumming circles.

When an editor sends Gabriel yet another book to blurb, he reluctantly opens the package to find a long, rending memoir by Pete Lomax, an HIV-positive 13-year-old survivor of incest, rape, and sexual slavery. The book is called The Blacking Factory, after the miserable London bottling factory where Dickens spent part of his poverty-stricken childhood. As Gabriel reflects:

Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory, some awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as surely as we lose our baby teeth. And the outcome can't be called. Some of us end up like Dickens; others like Jeffrey Dahmer. It's not a question of good or evil, Pete believes. Just the random brutality of the universe and our native ability to withstand it.

After Pete escaped from his parents and was adopted by a therapist named Donna Lomax, his slow recovery was helped along by his memoir-writing and by frequent doses of "Noone at Night."

Touched by Pete's devotion to his stories, as well as the boy's obvious need for a father figure, Gabriel finds himself drawn into an intense relationship with his young fan, involving long, late-night phone calls that begin to worry Gabriel's friends. And, other than their mutual need, how much does he really know about Pete, anyway? As Gabriel begins to question his own motives, as well as those of the boy, The Night Listener transforms itself from an absorbing but quotidian story of loss and midlife angst into a dark and suspenseful page-turner with a playful metaphysical aspect and an un-Dickensian sexual candor. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
HAfter an eight-year wait, Maupin rewards his fans and accomplishes the unthinkable: surpassing the excellence of his Tales of the City series. Filled with twists and turns that rival The Sixth Sense and The Crying Game, Maupin's new novel is a deceptively simple page-turner perfectly suited for the audio format. Surprises that would be telegraphed in a film are perfectly sprung on listeners. Not only is it a book that listeners will want to discuss with friends, but once finished and all is revealed, it's likely people will want to listen to it again with a fresh ear to hear the clues that have been planted along the way. Maupin's most reflective, full-bodied and autobiographical novel yet begins with alter ego Gabriel Noone, author of the cult radio serial Noone at Night, facing two disruptions in his calm, settled life: his longtime lover, Jess, has moved out and Gabe has developed writer's block. Amid this stress, Gabe's editor asks him to read a manuscript written by an HIV-positive 13-year-old named Pete Lomax that details his escape from years of sexual and physical abuse. Gabe is so moved, he calls the boy and a friendship develops. His relationship with Pete (and Pete's adoptive mother, Donna) helps clarify other troubled relationships in his life while opening up new questions concerning trust, truth and friendship. Maupin presents his tale with such polished, effortless elegance that his talent can be underestimated because the sweat behind it is so invisible. Maupin's melodious, expressive reading reinforces his smooth prose, which is written to be read aloud. Audio is the perfect medium for this born storyteller. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 7). (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Devastated by his breakup with longtime partner Jess, author Gabriel Noone is in a reflective and fragile emotional state when he is asked to comment on a manuscript. Written by 13-year-old Pete, the journal relates a horrific childhood of sexual abuse by his parents and paying customers, resulting in Pete's contracting AIDS. Adopted by a supportive and loving social worker, the young man has been a loyal fan of Gabriel's, who is a public radio storyteller with a large following. Pete and Gabriel begin communicating via telephone and become increasingly involved in each other's lives. When Jess questions the authenticity of Pete's writings and, indeed, his very existence, Gabriel embarks upon a journey both figurative and literal that explores his changing relationship with his partner, his childhood, and his current relationship with his blustery Charlestonian father. Celebrated for Tales of the City, Maupin is a master of character development, deftly weaving lives and creating intriguing, credible people who stay with the listener long after the story concludes. Although there are sexually graphic passages, including a disappointingly gratuitous truck stop scene, the author's reading and overall handling of this compelling story is masterful. Coupled with an original, haunting musical score, this presentation will appeal not only to Maupin's fans but to a wide audience. Susan McCaffrey, Haslett H.S., MI
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Customer Reviews

MAUPIN'S PROSE IS ENTHRALLING - HIS VOICE ARRESTING


While the movie version of The Night Listener certainly didn't set any box office records, for this listener the audio rates high largely because of the affecting narration provided by author Armistead Maupin. This is a poignant story of a man who feels lost and unloved, and Maupin reads it with insight, illuminating the fears and doubts that possess protagonist Gabriel Noone.

Gabriel comes to life at night - he's a Manhattan based late hours radio host, Noone At Night. He's also a gay man who has broken up with his partner, Jess. After finding himself evidently free of the AIDS virus Jess wants more in life than he is finding with Gabriel. While Gabriel only wanted Jess. Especially vulnerable due to an abusive father who publicly ridiculed him and would never recognize his homosexuality, Gabriel is depressed and feels useless.

He seeks to assuage that feeling by connecting with a young fan, Pete Lomax, who lives in Wisconsin. Pete has suffered as much or more than Gabriel at the hands of physically abusive parents, and now in a struggle with AIDS. The two, Gabriel and Pete, quickly develop a warm, supportive father/son relationship all by telephone. Gabriel, of course, again feels needed.

Eventually, Gabriel decides to go to Wisconsin to see Pete. What he finds there is totally unexpected.

Those who enjoyed Tales of the City will once again find themselves enthralled by Maupin's prose. His voice is icing on the cake.

- Gail Cooke

incredible
This was just an excellent book, so different from what else is out there to read. I recommend this book to anyone (unless you have a real problem with homosexuality). If so, it wouldn't be your cup of tea. I enjoy reading about people's lives that are different than mine.
I intend to read everything he's written.

Not believable, except in parts
I found this book to be a fun read, but it's not a "masterpiece" or a "triumph." Even by Maupin's "Tale of the City" standards, this is a strangely unsatisfying novel. I thought the storyline itself was confusing and did not really lead much of anywhere. I was fascinated with this book more as a document of Maupin's self-indulgence than as an act of fictional creativity.

I would have liked to see a novel that spent more time with Noone's breakup with his long-time lover, Jess. The dynamics of Noone's heartbreak in the context of seeing a lover move from almost certain death to a completely different plane are handled wonderfully, but it would have been preferable to see this story moved to the forefront and the hokey 13-year-old-as-counselor gimmick moved to the background. The novel that Maupin really should have written, unfortunately, is not what we get.