A hilarious and touching new installment of Armistead Maupin's beloved Tales of the City series Twenty years have passed since Mary Ann Singleton left her husband and child in San Francisco to pursue her dream of a television career in New York. Now a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, a gardener happily ensconced with his much-younger husband.
Mary Ann finds temporary refuge in the couple's backyard cottage, where, at the unnerving age of fifty-seven, she licks her wounds and takes stock of her mistakes. Soon, with the help of Facebook and a few old friends, she begins to reengage with life, only to confront fresh terrors when her checkered past comes back to haunt her in a way she could never have imagined.
After the intimate first-person narrative of Maupin's last novel, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn marks the author's return to the multicharacter plotlines and darkly comic themes of his earlier work. Among those caught in Mary Ann's orbit are her estranged daughter, Shawna, a popular sex blogger; Jake Greenleaf, Michael's transgendered gardening assistant; socialite DeDe Halcyon-Wilson; and the indefatigable Anna Madrigal, Mary Ann's former landlady at 28 Barbary Lane.
More than three decades in the making, Armistead Maupin's legendary Tales of the City series rolls into a new age, still sassy, irreverent, and curious, and still exploring the boundaries of the human experience with insight, compassion, and mordant wit.
Joe says:
"Mary Ann in Autumn is the latest, the seventh, in the Tales of City series. Originally published in the 1980's, this series of books follows the residents (and now, former) of 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco. A couple of years ago, Maupin came out with Michael Tolliver Lives, bringing us up to date on the life of Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, as well as several of the other characters from the beloved series. Now, in this latest book, he takes us back into their lives. They are older (the title character is 57 and dealing with cancer) and are not always wiser. Told in the same style as the others (each chapter is a short vignette about a different character), the main focus of the book is on Mary Ann Singleton dealing with the choices she made earlier in her life.
Reading this book was like coming home. These are characters who have been part of my life for nearly 15 years (I was a late comer to the series). They have aged in real time, and that is the bittersweet portion of the book. If you are a fan of the books, you're going to read this one. You're going to laugh a lot, and you're going to cry some, too. If you haven't heard of these, it is still worth reading. This book could definitely stand alone, but really shines if the reader is familiar with the pasts of these characters. Another noteworthy aspect of this book: the characters run the gamut from gay to straight to transgendered and from young to old to older. (One of my favorite lines from the book: "'You're not old,' [Mary Ann] said, scolding [Michael] with a glance. 'You're my age.'" Indeed, aren't we all?"
--Joe
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