MARY ANN AUTUMN (Tales of the City, 8)

I was totally absorbed into the Tales of The City when Armisted first released his series of books about 28 Barbary Lane. I got to know the family that surrounded Anna Madrigal and of course the leading man in in Michael (Mouse) Tolliver. The adventures, the lives, the personalities all came to life and jumped clear off the page into one's imagination. We visited the "family" on six different occasions and loved and cared for each of the people we knew. Michael's love life was of particular resonance to me as a gay man in a similar age group to him. Then we got to see Michael in later life in Michael Tolliver Lives. Again we fell for the easy going romantic that is Mouse. Now we have a chance to engage with him again. This time with his love Ben and the quirky and slightly mixed up Mary Anne. This time Mary Anne is in the spotlight as she struggles with her fight with cancer and the departure from her marriage with what appears a slightly abusive man. We feel for Mary Anne as she rediscovers some of the friends she knew in San Francisco. Michael, the ever loyal friend just picks her up and provides her with the safety she so needs at this time. We find out that DeDe Halcion is now happily married to the woman she has made her life partner. No longer the flightly socialite, but a more grounded and mature friend to Mary Anne. We also meet some of the "off-spring" from the heady days of the 70s in Barbary Lane. In particular Shawna the estranged daughter that Mary Anne had…

Once I started reading Mary Ann in Autumn, I devoured it in two days, because I was hungry, starving in fact for Maupin's genius for making his characters and plot come to life. As part of the Tales Of the City series of novels, many characters were old friends I'd met before each with their on charming quirks that made them so human. With this novel and the sequels that preceded it in this series, Maupin has given authenticity to the lives of characters who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered as well as to those who are their allies. The heroine of this piece is one of those allies, Mary Ann Singleton, who has been a fixture in these novels from the beginning. We haven't seen or heard from her in awhile, but she comes roaring back and wins our hearts all over again. The plot of Mary Ann in Autumn has everything, mystery, intrigue, romance. Maupin is a master at writing conversations. The conversations in fact often take the most mundane of incidents and transform them into the deepest and most touching moments. If you've read all of the other books in the series, your enjoyment of the mystery and intrigue you find in this new installment will only be enhanced, but if Mary Ann in Autumn is your introduction to the Tales, don't worry. You'll be sitting on the edge of your seat in anticipation of what is going to happen next just like the rest of us. Another thing that endears the reader to the characters you meet here is that Maupin endows each of them with their…

Strengths: As always, Maupin presents a mixture of beloved old characters and attractive new characters, all held together by threads of love and acceptance. Leia's (retrospective) development is powerful and moving. She starts as a stereotype. She ends as a human being. Anna Madrigal isn't just the same Anna with 10 more years on her. She's more frail, talks less. Anna shows some of the ravages of age. Weaknesses: Mary Ann's redemption is too pat. "Hi guys, sorry I've been a bitch for 20 years, can you help me?" "Of course! We forgive you!". Re-appearance of one of the bad characters from an earlier book rings falsely. Unlike other readers, the over-the-top-ness doesn't bother me at all: that is part of the series' charm. The recycledness bothers me. Josh started out interesting -- a character with a dislikeable background with promise of becoming sympathetic. But his story cut off too soon. Brian doesn't appear on stage. === Overall: 3 stars for one more book in the series. Plus a star for Leia. It's been a long time since Mouse entered an underwear dance contest to make the rent money. The new books (7 and 8) are settling down just as human beings in their 40's and 50's do. And that's perfectly okay with me.

While this book is not about Mary Ann Summers, nor is she stranded on an island, it brings us up to date on Mary Ann Singleton,one of Armistead Maupin's central characters from his Tales of The City novels. For the novice Maupin reader, those books were based on a series of popular fictional newspaper articles that because of popular demand were compiled into a series of books and again because of popular demand, television miniseries. If you never have been fortunate enough to have read the articles, books or seen the miniseries this serves as a good introduction to those works. Mr. Maupin's destined to be remembered as an All American writer because he not only captured life in San Francisco since the late 1970's but in the U.S. as well through introducing us to a unique cast of characters who weave in and out of each other's lives through the passage of time and their journeys. He never keeps his readers bored as he creates subplots that overlap and come together which sometimes have you scratching your head and at other times makes you laugh at his character's insights. Another unique thing about his style is the characters range from being naive to those who live in a subculture, yet they all seem to be connected. In the case of the former you have Mary Ann Singleton. In these series, Mary Ann is the first character we meet in her trek from moving from the Midwest to San Francisco as she as a women of her times seeks to start her own life. There she meets what is to…

Armistead Maupin reminds us once again that a family can be what you make it. The characters in his series, "Tales of the City", have been a formed-family since they first appeared in print some thirty years ago. The Barbary Lane collective house, headed by Anna Madrigal, had been home for many years to a disparate group of people who had lived, and loved, together. Introduced first in Maupin's five "Tales" books, the characters have aged appropriately as Maupin himself has aged. AIDS and other diseases - mental as well as physical - have taken their toll on the former residents of the Lane, but Mary Ann Singleton, Brian (missing from this book), Michael and Ben, as well as DeDe and D'Or and Anna Madrigal herself, have found that life - and love - has continued. Of course, the older generations above - original residents of Barbary Lane - have been joined in recent books by Shawna and Jake, as well as other characters. The younger generation have certainly enlivened the lives of the older group, as well as becoming part of the Barbary Lane Family. In "Mary Ann in Autumn", Mary Ann has returned to San Francisco from her home in the wealthy suburb of Darien, CT,fleeing both the demise of a bad marriage and the frightening diagnosis of uterine cancer. She had left her Barbary Lane "family" twenty years earlier, returning only for a short visit to Anna after her stroke a few years previously. Now Mary Ann has returned, seeking solace from her many friends. Maupin writes well -…