SOURCE: "Everybody's Beautiful," in New York Times Book Review, November 29, 1992, p. 24.

Johnson is an American novelist and critic. In the following review of Maybe the Moon, she centers on the theme of discrimination and the protagonist Cady Roth.

Cadence (Cady) Roth longs to be a real movie star. But she cannot get away from her most famous role, as Mr. Woods, an E.T.- or Yoda-like character—in an electronically controlled rubber suit—in a hit science fiction movie. That this otherwise intelligent person does not understand why other offers are not rolling in is soon apparent to readers of Armistead Maupin's novel Maybe the Moon. Cady is a 31-inch-tall, fat dwarf.

Cady lives in Studio City, near Hollywood, with her airhead friend Renee, who is unaccountably happy to pay the entire rent, rub lotion on Cady's legs and lift her up onto chairs. Their dialogue is...