The Night Listener (Unabridged)
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
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.
Customer Reviews
Pleasantly Surprised
I went to my local library and checked the book out to read along with the audio book, I wanted to be able to soak in every spoken word. The first 100 or so pages I couldn't put it down, I listened to it at night when there wasn't anything distracting going on and midway through I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the story line and what to expect next. It had gotten a little long winded in places and felt like maybe too much was being said about one thing and not enough about another. As it progressed I wasn't sure anymore. After 200 or so pages of the book I decided to put it down and just listen to the audio book by itself. I was fooled when Armistead Maupin said "The End" I was disappointed by the way it ended and all I could think was "What the Heck!?" Then after a brief pause and some short music the book seemed to continue and suddenly things started coming together and it all made sense. I was elated, pleasantly surprised and very pleased that I didn't turn off my ipod when I heard "The End" being spoken. All and all it's a good book, it kind of gave me insight in my own relationship with my father and my partner as a gay man. I recommend this audio book.