Mary Ann in Autumn

August 30, 2010
In the sure-to-please follow-up to Michael Tolliver Lives, the bestselling Tales of the City reboot, it's been 20 years since series anchor Mary Ann Singleton left her family and headed to New York. Maupin's San Francisco is comforting in its familiarity, and the gang is (mostly) all here, older, wiser, and settled in: Michael "Mouse" Tolliver is married to Ben; Shawna, Mary Ann's estranged daughter, is a popular sex blogger who is dating Otto, an enigmatic professional clown; and grand dame Anna Madrigal, once landlady to Michael and Mary Ann, is still kicking in her late 80s. Into this milieu returns Mary Ann, who ditched her husband and the young Shawna for a career in television. Now, nearing 60, she's back with news she can't bear to tell anyone but Michael. From the haven of his tiny garden cottage, Mary Ann regroups and confronts some uncomfortable chapters in her past. As ever, Maupin's edgy wit energizes the layered story lines. His keen eye for irony and human foible is balanced by an innate compassion in this examination of the life of a woman of a certain age.

In the eighth Tales of the City installment, Mary Ann Carruthers (née Singleton) returns to San Francisco and her dear friend Michael "Mouse" Tolliver for comfort after the double punch of her husband's very public infidelity and her diagnosis of uterine cancer. Author/narrator Armistead Maupin does not trouble to "do voices"; instead, he lavishes the listener with soft-spoken, courtly charm and projects deep compassion for the characters he's lived with for more than 30 years. He also offers a nod to the more lurid, breathless style of earlier volumes in the series by providing a theatrically pathetic coda to a major plotline from book one. A.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

October 1, 2010

This eighth installment of Maupin's "Tales of the City" series focuses on Mary Ann Singleton's return to San Francisco to recuperate from surgery and a wounded heart. Mary Ann finds refuge with her old friend Michael "Mouse" Tolliver while she comes to terms with her past actions and future hopes. Her arrival affects several others, including Michael's husband, Ben; transgendered assistant, Jake; Mary Ann's daughter, Shawna; and, of course, former landlady Anna Madrigal. Maupin interweaves chapters from the viewpoints of several characters, which adds to the atmosphere, as does his affectionate portrait of San Francisco. Like the recent Michael Tolliver Lives, this novel shows the beloved characters of Barbary Lane approaching middle age and beyond with grace and thoughtfulness. As always, the interconnectedness of the individuals is made explicit, if a tad coincidental in one case, but the charm of the Tales has not waned. VERDICT A must for fans, but new readers will find it an accessible entry point. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/10; a stage musical version of Tales of the City is set to premiere in San Francisco in 2011.--Ed.]--Devon Thomas, DevIndexing, Chelsea, MI

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2010

Maupin continues his popular Tales of the City saga (Michael Tolliver Lives, 2007, etc.) with the return to San Francisco of Mary Ann Singleton after 20 years in the cushy Connecticut suburbs.

She's caught her retired-CEO husband cheating via Skype, and she's been diagnosed with uterine cancer, so Mary Ann heads west to take refuge with Michael, her former housemate from 28 Barbary Lane, and his much-younger husband Ben. Lesbian buddies DeDe and D'or find Mary Ann a female oncologist, and while she's waiting for surgery, Ben gets her onto Facebook so she can reconnect with people who knew her as a local TV celebrity back in the '80s. Meanwhile, Shawna, the adopted daughter Mary Ann left with ex-husband Brian when she moved east, is looking to expand her popular Grrrl on the Loose blog into subjects beyond sex. Jake, Michael's transgendered partner in his gardening firm, doesn't have the money to complete the transition from female to male because business is lousy following the economic meltdown, though San Francisco's bohemians are hopeful following Obama's election. And Cliff, Ben's casual acquaintance from the dog park, is brooding over something Ben would rather not know about, since the elderly drunk clearly has serious personal problems. Maupin's chronicle of interconnected lives and tangled personal relations is as engaging and warmhearted as ever, but he's more careless than usual with structure. Shawna fixates on a drug-addicted, mentally ill homeless woman who proves to be linked to the Barbary Lane past via an outrageous plot twist that also connects a creepy Facebook "friend" of Mary Ann's with a pedophile she once knew—who turns up toting a gun. Maupin should have trusted his fallible, lovable characters to sustain our interest; resorting to such a luridly melodramatic device detracts from the pleasure of reacquainting ourselves with them.

Agreeable entertainment until the ridiculous denouement.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 15, 2010
San Francisco in the 1960s was ground zero of the hippie movement and the fertile sprouting field of gay culture and liberationin other words, tolerance of the unconventional was the meat and spice of the place. Maupins cult series Tales of the City, three novels of which, Tales of the City (1978), More Tales of the City (1980), and Further Tales of the City (1982), served as the basis for a popular television series, captures with sheer delight the many faces of diversity in that electric city in those Grace Slick times. Now, in Maupins new novel, as his devoted readership has aged, so have the greatly loved characters who gravitated to 28 Barbary Lane. The focal character is Mary Ann Singleton, who for a long time has been living a by-the-book life in Connecticut, but when she is diagnosed with cancer and confronted with her husbands infidelity, she needs retreat and restoration, which she seeks back in her old haunts, among old friends. The graying of the Tales of the City cast wont sadden readers. This affectionate novel, with its carefully unfolding story line (and perfect ending), will work its warmth and charm. High-Demand Backstory: Maupin will make appearances on the West Coast, online publicity will be focused on writing blogs and LGBT sites, and a social-networking campaign will be carried out on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and LibraryThing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)