The Night Listener

By: Armistead Maupin

Narrated by: Armistead Maupin

Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Few storytellers in America write with such unerring insight and honesty as Armistead Maupin. Now he has given us his most ambitious and daringly imaginative work, The Night Listener, a novel as spoken-word serial, including an original music score.

Gabriel Noone is a fabulist, a writer whose late-night radio tales have brought him into the homes of millions. In the midst of a painful, unwanted separation from his longtime love, Gabriel reads the extraordinary memoir of Pete Lomax, an ailing 13-year-old boy who suffered horrific abuse at the hands of his parents. Pete is not only a gifted diarist but also a devoted listener of Gabriel's show. And thus begins an extraordinary phone friendship.

Then, out of the blue, troubling new questions arise, exploding Gabriel'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.

This unprecedented audio project is as thought-provoking as it is mesmeric. The Night Listener is a meditation on the power of voices and the faith we place in them, and an extraordinary audio experience from an American literary icon.

©2000 Literary Bent LLC (P)2000 HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Critic reviews

"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....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....Audio is the perfect medium for this born storyteller." (Publishers Weekly)

Beautifully read & written; story frustrating

I was charmed by this title, and listened with rapt attention. The dialog is well-written and warm. The reading is excellent. I really enjoyed the story, but I have to admit I kept thinking "this guy is really thick" -- there were so many easy things he could do to resolve his questions, but he was always too late in doing them -- so I guess what I experience was frustration with the character.

Review of The Night Listener

I enjoyed most of the book but was very unhappy with the ending. Whatever happened to Anna’s suggestion that Pete’s voice be compared with his mother’s to see if they were the same? The author brings that wonderful idea into the story and just drops it. I have delighted in all of Maupin’s books so I was surprised to find this one so disappointing. Never-the-less I shall always remain a faithful fan.

Unfinished, but still 5 stars

This is a brilliant, complex, touching, entertaining, inspiring and unfinished book. Interestingly, it is also not clear whether it is fact or fiction. I suspect that it is fact, which would also explain why it is so inconclusive: It peters out because the author himself simply doesn't know how it ends.

Of course, that is also the main theme of the book itself: Is what is happening fact or fiction? Is it really happening, or is it just an imagining? Are our lives really happening as we believe them to be happening, or are they something else altogether?

Even so, there is still something unsatisfying about the final product. The characters waver between the two- and three-dimensional and then plump down firmly on the side of the former. This is annoying, because it is amply clear that Maupin has it in him to make them not three- but multi-dimensional.

Somehow I just don't buy the literary artifice of the open ending. I have nothing against open endings, but this one doesn't wash. My suspicion is that Maupin got stuck or bored or bogged down and simply stopped being really committed to the project when he was around two thirds of the way through. This is where the book starts to dissolve and lose its initial promise, and the prose starts to read more like a chore than a pleasure.

I still wanted to give it five stars because of the magnificent way it started, but I finally decided on three for the book we actually have. The five-star book is there, and it is truly stunning, Maupin just needs to sit down and write it. If he wants to, of course...

OOOPS

This was a very good listen, the characters and plot were well drawn and intriguing. My 71 year old sensibilities were shaken by the graphic descriptions and coarse language in some places. However I never thought it was gratuitous. I would love to read more by this author but if it is listed under "erotoca" as this was, I will believe it !

Was Expecting More

This was a decent read...er...listen, but I was expecting more. I think I enjoyed "The Electrifying True Story Behind the Night Listener" better. Not as good as "Tales of the City...," but if you like Armistead, you'll probably enjoy it.

Night Napper... Snooze On

I love Maupin but this book was an ear bleeding slow read. Typical Maupin's far fetched adventures and tales he was true to form. However this story was very twisted and a little dark in nature. Oddly intriguing at times but unentertaining. It just fell flat and he's done better. A minor extension and connection to Tales of the City. I felt it would have been better.

The narration was great but the audio skipped here and there.

Excellent

A wonderful treatise on reality -- as it appears to each one of us. I really enjoyed Tales of the City. This is so much more, so rich, so multilevel. It ranks right up there with the best audiobooks I have heard.

Maupin's narration, while not delineating or differentiating characters as many readers do, is immediate, engrossing, and real.

Not Tales of the City

I purchased this book because I loved the Tales of the City series on ShowTime. I had not read any previous works by this author. Once I started listening I was completed enchanted with the rich detail and description of each character and scene. Maupin's use of the English language is without a doubt top notch. I wish that I could think as well as he writes. He is also the reader/actor in The Night Listener. His soothing voice and unusual accent makes this book just that much better. Five stars from this longtime Audible listener!

You'll question your own existence by the end...

This extraordinary memoir - um, fictional retelling? - um, work of science fiction? - um BOOK? will leave you chilled and confused, but those are not unintended consequences, nor negative comments on the work. Armistead Maupin lightly disguises his life and connection with the ethereal boy of the title, who for almost a decade has been confounding the publishing world and many individuals with his unlikely existence. The one thing about this book that is guaranteed fact is the honesty of Maupin's voice and compassionate regard in which he held the dubious sprite. His journey becomes our own as we follow the emotional switchback he rides in his efforts to discover the truth without betraying a child whose faith has been tested in a fire hotter than hell's imagination.

Programming criticism: Maupin's voice and style are without peer, but this long reading suffers badly from silent "page breaks" so long I thought the batteries had died or the file failed on several occasions. There is incidental music between chapters but this dies out and dead air fills the room for interminable periods.

Excellent book

This was a mesmerizing and fun book to listen to, even though I knew the basis of the story since I had watched the movie (starring Robin Williams) which is based on this novel. If you are an Audible listener, be sure to also listen to the New Yorker article regarding this book and the original Audible interview with Armistead Maupin regarding this novel, both of which should still be available for listening to via Audible.