The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 25 September 2001
by Armistead Maupin
First appearing as a serial in the San Francisco Chronicle in the late 1970s, this collection works well as a novel, providing today a vivid flashback to that city and that time. Mary Ann Singleton, a young woman from Cleveland vacationing in the City by the Bay, discovers that it is truly her home. The book opens with her phone call to the parents, announcing her intention to stay. They are conservatively afraid of San Francisco's reputation for its nuts and flakes. She finds this very milieu to be warm, inviting, and full of love and connection. Indeed, the series was written at a time when San Francisco's sense of itself and its community had not yet been swallowed by the consumerism of the 80s and 90s, and into the DotCom economic revolution that eventually evaporated. Maupin, instead, takes us into intensely tight-knit circle of friends and neighbors at Barbary Lane (the real Macondray Lane) on the slope of Russian Hill. There is a glimpse into gay life in the city in the pre-AIDS era. There are freewheeling young women looking for sex and love in a very open city. And there are numerous landmarks in the book's landscape that would make any real San Franciscan wax nostalgic. Maupin's writing is light and funny, self-referential and self-deprecating. It is engaging and sometimes touching. The short chapters leave little room for deep character or story development, so this reads like a newspaper serial. Yet it holds together well as a book. This reader first encountered these stories when he was a kid delivering the Chronicle in San Francisco's Sunset district. Today, they seem an almost innocent earlier day of youthful fun and adventure in the best city in the world. (There are five sequels to this collection, and two novels. The first three books have also been made into television series, and stage musical.)
Also by Maupin: [More Tales of the City]
[Further Tales of the City]
[Babycakes]
[Significant Others]
[Sure of You]
[Michael Tolliver Lives]
[Mary Ann in Autumn]
See also: [Armistead Maupin by Patrick Gale]