The Days of Anna Madrigal: A Novel

There is a "no way!!!" moment at the end of "Mary Ann In Autmn" where the character named Cliff pulls a folded photograph of Mary Ann Singleton from his pocket. Inscribed, "To Cliff: Thanks for the memories! Mary Ann," it sent me scrambling back through the pages of "Sure of You" to be certain I wasn't mistaken, because something in me remembered the exact innocuous moment Mary Ann signed that picture. And, sure enough, there it was, really a throwaway moment in "Sure of You," but one which would come back in a big way. And it was there that I discovered, after years of reading this series of novels, that there is something beyond Maupin's ability to draw amazingly realized characters, settings and themes that attracts me on a deeper level to his writing. That is his penchant for coincidence, or coinkydink, of which he says there is no such thing. And yet, it turns up time and again. And again. And again. The first novels of the series, being published serially, relied on coinkydink to move the stories along. Maupin's later novels are peppered with coinkydink--Ned Lockwood's fate revealed in "Maybe the Moon," Anna Day as Gabriel Noone's bookkeeper in "The Night Listener," Gabriel Noone himself popping up in cameo in "Mary Ann In Autumn," these are all momentary coinkydinks that make the reader feel as if they are in on the joke. And so, here we have "The Days of Anna Madrigal," the supposedly final tale of the city (although, that is probably as much debatable as "Sure of…

Armistead Maupin has written about this core group of characters since the seventies. He put down the pen in 1989 with Sure of You, then magically picked it up again recently with three new novels revisiting San Francisco in the twenty first century. His first novel ran as a serial in a San Francisco newspaper. The three new ones are written in the same style, with a group of compelling characters whose stories weave in and out of each other's in short chapters of continuos narrative. Everyone is here to say goodbye. There is Anna Madrigal, the ninety two year old transgender landlady who revisits the past in mind and body to fight some old demons. Brian is here, traveling in an R.V. He finally marries a character who is also an old friend. Michael is here trying to grow old gracefully as a gay man with a younger husband, we even catch up with Mary Ann in the final act, and spunky lone wolf Shawna wants to have a baby. Maupin is a writer who can be sentimental and nostalgic skillfully, without being overbearing. He keep things topical and fresh always on top of society's latest trends especially those pertinent to San Franciscans. I'm also happy to read such a vivid account of Burning Man without actually going( I am just not good at roughing it). Maupin pioneered the concept of making your own family way before it was an accepted lifestyle(by some anyway. I really think you would like this book even without having read any of the others, and what a treat it would be to…

Once upon a time there was a magical city called San Fransisco. This was before the monsters and space aliens and super villains all rotated through for their free shot at the Golden Gate Bridge. This San Fransisco was a city of love, friendly casual drugs, sex as exercise or as tenderness, and infinite tolerance for all of the strange, mostly nonviolent variations found in humans. Armistead Maupin was the author of this place and in a series of books, originally written as a newspaper column we came into a lotus eater's entrancement. The still quiet center of this mythical place was a boarding house and more particularly its landlady: Anna Madrigal. Using a combination of humor, clever plotting and a sincere desire to share with the reader the character of interesting and likable people, I among millions of others found ourselves wishing there was this place and these people. As Maupin added to his Tales of the City books he would add in some of the darker realities, always few blocks from Ms Madrigal's. There was cancer, and religious villainy; un-happy love, creepy commercialism and child abuse. Through it all Anna Madrigal, sometime with the help of her home grown strains of Marihuana was the hip, thoughtful den mother, friend, confidant adult we all wish we had to help us once we were too old to depend on our real parents. And so the original Tales of the City ran through 6 titles, each exploring and exhausting the variations on life that always seemed about right…

Maupin's Tales of the City series is fabulous mind-candy, especially for those of us who came of age and came out in the boomer years. A young friend that I have taken as my son moved to the Bay Area in his early twenties and wanted to get a sense of the place as a young, recently out gay man and so I recommended the books to him. About a year later he called me to let me know that the musical was premiering and he wanted me to come out there so that we could attend the performance together, which we did. It was a delight (although it seemed that the musical had too many inside jokes to be widely popular beyond the Bay Area). This is the usual tapestry of interestingly knotted plotlines and characters that makes these books such wonderful entertainment. Throughout my adult life I have always looked forward to the next book so I opened this one already with a sense of grief about this as the last book and my last meeting with Anna Madrigal. (Although he has said this before.) Although I am typically quite a digestive reader, these books I always finish in a single sitting as if to obtain the maximum high. This time my partner and I are reading a chapter each night before we sleep. It's a little challenging to keep all the lines of the action straight, but we are enjoying enormously.

Or something like that. What seems like a series finale - based on the title - is a fantastic blending of the history of our loving lead lady with a story that secures all of our present day characters' futures. With a setting that surrounds burning man, from the build up of planning, preparations and execution to a fantastic job of writing the reader into the setting of the playa...it really is difficult to imagine a better end to this work. From SF in the 70's to BM in the new millennium, I felt like the end was true to the characters, with only one or two convenient plot tools thrown in. And, oh...how I envy these particular plot tools, especially the one sentence wrap up of the rich boyfriend at the end of the story. Who can write me one of those? It's not that I will miss these characters, if this rule is the end, because I can always meet them starting at 28 Barbary Lane and relive their wonderful tales over and over again. But if this is the end, then I will miss witnessing the unfolding of their new adventures. These wonderful people have been with me since I started my own journey as a gay youth. I will miss them as the peers they were for me as I met and embraced my own identity and helped me become true to myself as an individual.