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Title: The Night Listener: A Novel by Armistead Maupin ISBN: 0-06-093090-X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 18 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.99 (109 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Maupin Bares All
Comment: The idea for a plot line is a good one. A longely, middle aged gay male writer phones a thirteen year old boy to congratulate him on his upcoming book. The boy, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, is sorely in need of a father figure and role model. A close friendship soon forms via long distance.
We're intermitently teased with this plot device while we are told about the writer's lover moving out, his ambiguous relationship with his father, his writer's block, and his depression. But we're teased so masterfully that it's only upon finishing this novel that we learn this really wasn't about a thirteen year old boy at all . . . . it was about the writer trying to cope with his life, his pain, and his loneliness.
Some reviewers have said that this is probably the most autobiographical work of Maupin's to date. It left me with conflicting feelings . . . . actually embarrassed at times that anyone could so publicly and intimately share their life, yet filled with admiration for the intense honesty on every page.
Maupin, if nothing else, is a master story teller as evidenced by his Tales series . . . . probably the best American soap opera of the Twentieth Century. What makes this book more than a mere purging of pain, what gives it its heart, its deafening reality, and ultimately wins our repect is the writer's attitude. For when all is said and done, here's a story about someone who still believes in true love.
Rating: 3
Summary: What I read while walking the dog
Comment: I have not often been so uncomfortable reading a novel. On the surface, the book is about a writer and his relationship with an abused and ill teenager who exists only in a draft novel and as a disembodied voice over the phone line. In fact, it's really about a writer struggling with his recent and bewildering break-up, with his own middle-age and his blossoming self-awareness and dawning humility. I squirmed, put the book aside, did the dishes, read, walked the dog and picked it up again to get through it headlong and finally. I liked that that the protagonist is not very endearing. He's intelligent and sweet (Maupin could not write a bitter character!) of course but he's also arrogant, pushy and relatively unaware of the feelings, needs and efforts of the people who love him. There are truly wonderful but brief depictions that moved and interested me: his lover Jess, the aged dog Hugo, the bi-sexual truck driver and especially the writer's mother. Unfortunately, not being a story about these interesting people, we are constantly drawn back to this hammering saga of a writer struggling with his own humility and powerlessness. This is too much personal surgery out of which to make an interesting novel.
Rating: 5
Summary: incredible
Comment: 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.
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Title: Maybe the Moon : A Novel by Armistead Maupin ISBN: 0060924349 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 04 August, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Back to Barbary Lane: The Final Tales of the City Omnibus by Armistead Maupin ISBN: 0060166495 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Pub. Date: 01 September, 1991 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Significant Others by Armistead Maupin ISBN: 0060924810 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 January, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Sure of You by Armistead Maupin ISBN: 0060924845 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 January, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: 28 Barbary Lane : A "Tales of the City" Omnibus by Armistead Maupin ISBN: 0060164662 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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