After an eight-year absence that has seen his fans re-read most of
his oeuvre at least twice, Maupin makes a startling return to the
fray with a brave and unsettling novel about his alter ego, a star
of radio fiction called Gabriel Noone, who is writing an
autobiographical novel. In both fact and fiction the purpose is as
much intensely personal therapy as entertainment. As in the
Hitchcock thrillers Maupin so loves, games are played with the
audience's expectations. The starting points for the narrative are
two real-life events. Maupin and his partner Terry Anderson, went
through what is called a 'cocktail divorce', confronting themselves
and their relationship when it became clear that, thanks to a new
drug cocktail, Terry was no longer living under a death sentence
from AIDS. As in real life, Noone and his lover face the additional
pressure of the romantic expectations of a million fans of their
fictional other selves, trailblazers in the cause of gay visibility
in mass-market fiction. The second event, less traumatic than
downright weird, was when Maupin found himself drawn into a purely
telephonic friendship with a kid dying from AIDS contracted at the
hands of sexually abusive parents. Said kid had written an
astonishing memoir which Maupin was all set to help launch, only to
have doubt cast on whether the kid actually existed or was,
perhaps, the creation of the ultra-protective foster mother who was
allowing nobody to meet him in person. From these two potent
narrative ingredients, Maupin weaves a teasing mystery story. This
isn't Mary Ann Singleton on the trail of a serial killer, but
Maupin sleuthing himself out. Going in search of the boy who has
become a kind of son to him, Gabriel Noone finds himself at last
able to confront and work through his highly problematic
relationship with his right-wing Southerner dad and to perceive the
father-son elements in his painfully evolving relationship with his
ex. Anyone who knows something about Maupin will be startled at how
much of himself he dares to bare and any Tales fans suffering
withdrawal symptoms will be happy to make the acquaintance of
DeDe's daughter Anna, now a highly savvy young adult working as
Noone's part-time bookkeeper and full-time confidante. Review by
PATRICK GALE Editor's Note: Patrick Gale is the author of Outlines:
Armistead Maupin (Kirkus UK)
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.
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