SOURCE: "If You Go Down to the Woods Today," in New Statesman, Vol. 115, No. 2977, April 15, 1988, p. 42.

In the following review of Significant Others, Lumsden describes Maupin's writing as "urbane" and notes his propensity for humorous assessments of both hetero- and homosexuals.

As I write this review [of Significant Others] I am babysitting—actually, he's nine—while Zak's straight parents go off to court.

And that means that I'm inside the world that Maupin has made peculiarly his own. Listen: at breakfast, just half an hour ago, young Zak gazed at me earnestly—for we haven't met in a couple of years—and said without the least animosity, "God had to make it a man and a woman in the Garden of Eden, didn't he? If he'd made two men, we'd all be dead, wouldn't we?"

Great Heaven, I thought to myself, as every other adult around the table...