Michael Tolliver Lives: A Novel

Michael Tolliver Lives: A Novel

Inspiration for the Netflix Limited Series,  Tales of the City The seventh novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga. Nearly two decades after ending his groundbreaking Tales of the City saga of San Francisco life, Armistead Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero Michael Tolliver—the fifty-five-year-old sweet-spirited gardener and survivor of the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers—for a single day at once mundane and extraordinary... and filled with the everyday miracles of living. Armistead Maupin and his popular Tales of the City series evolved from a mid-1970s column in the San Francisco Chronicle and, over the next decade, attracted a loyal following. Those readers, as well as newcomers to Maupin's fiction, are in for a treat with Michael Tolliver Lives . These loosely connected vignettes benefit from Maupin's engaging voice, though the pacing is a bit uneven in places and plot takes a back seat to well-drawn, likeable characters. Critics inevitable compare the novel to Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones books or Sex and the City , though Maupin generally does it better. First-timers should find the new installment engaging enough to go back to the early volumes. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. *Starred Review* The title of this charming, heartwarming novel is perfectly pertinent to the story it tells. Michael Tolliver was one of the chief characters in Maupin's popular and now-classic Tales of the City series about 1980s gay life in San Francisco, where AIDS struck particularly hard. As Maupin picks up the story line two decades later, Michael, now in his midfifties, has survived the disease that so many of his cohorts did not. A southerner, Michael has lived in the City by the Bay for 30 years, and at this point in his life, he has much that is satisfying to look back on and much in his current life to be thankful for, especially his membership in the "sweet confederacy of survivors." This is a kind of wrapping-up novel, but also a giving-thanks one, as Michael bids farewell to his mother back in Florida and to his feisty former landlady, Anna Madrigal, another of the memorable recurrent characters from Tales of the City. Michael takes immense pleasure in the love he shares with a much-younger man, who stirs him to count the blessings of each day, one at a time. Sweet without being sappy. Brad Hooper Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Maupin’s writing is as cheerfully raunchy as ever . . . ” - Miami Herald “Here, we get a glimpse of what Maupin, at his best, has always done: linked the individual and the collective story, unfolded his narrative against the backdrop of larger events.” - Los Angeles Times “Maupin’s writing style is both breezy and humorous, which makes the sadder moments all the more poignant.” - Pittsburgh Tribune “Lucid, funny, and risqué.” - Time Out New York Michael Tolliver, the sweet-spirited Southerner in Armistead Maupin's classic Tales of the City series, is arguably one of the most widely loved characters in contem-porary fiction. Now, almost twenty years after ending his ground-breaking saga of San Francisco life, Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero, letting the fifty-five-year-old gardener tell his story in his own voice. Having survived the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers, Michael has learned to embrace the random pleasures of life, the tender alliances that sustain him in the hardest of times. Michael Tolliver Lives follows its protagonist as he finds love with a younger man, attends to his dying fundamentalist mother in Florida, and finally reaffirms his allegiance to a wise octogenarian who was once his landlady. Though this is a stand-alone novel—accessible to fans of Tales of the City and new readers alike—a reassuring number of familiar faces appear along the way. As usual, the author's mordant wit and ear for pitch-perfect dialogue serve every aspect of the story—from the bawdy to the bittersweet. Michael Tolliver Lives is a novel about the act of growing older joyfully and the everyday miracles that somehow make that possible. Armistead Maupin is the author of the Tales of the City series, which includes Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn, The Days of Anna Madrigal, and Mona of the Manor. His other books include the memoir Logical Family and the novels Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener. Maupin was the 2012 recipient of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Pioneer Award. He lives in London with his husband, Christopher Turner.