A review by monasterymonochrome
The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin

3.0

I've been interested in reading Maupin's Tales of the City for several years, but this became my first Maupin book when I learned about it on, of all places, an episode of 20/20 about the real-life case of Anthony Godby Johnson, which the book fictionalizes. I actually feel like I would have liked the book more had I not known about its inspiration going in, as it sticks extremely close to reality until the final third, where it takes more generous liberties. For this reason, there was very little sense of drama or suspense for me. I think the writing style is also partly to blame for this. I could tell that Maupin is used to writing less heavy fare, as there's a certain lightness to the prose that contradicts the gravity of the situation. Even though the story is, by necessity, largely dependent on phone conversations, I also thought that Maupin relied too heavily on dialogue in place of other forms of characterization. Finally, the extreme meta-ness of the novel was a bit much for me to take: it was often frustratingly difficult to figure out where Maupin ended and Gabriel Noone as a self-contained entity began, and I know that this partially serves the story's purpose of showing the blurriness of truth vs. fiction, but it could have done with a lot more nuance and subtlety in that regard. The afterword, particularly, was so heavy-handed that all I could do was roll my eyes. Overall, this wasn't a bad novel - it was interesting if not exciting, moved along at a brisk pace and was immensely readable (like many noted, I also liked that it featured gay characters whose gayness was not essential to the plot while remaining an important part of their characters) - but I think it could have been a whole lot better.