Armistead Maupin’s newest book returns to the characters that made him famous—those loveable misfits who lived on Barbary Lane in San Francisco during the free-wheeling seventies. Tales of the City became a provocative PBS television miniseries in 1994.  The controversial characters in the story (transgender, gay, promiscuous, adulterous) led to PBS shelving the film as quickly as possible. Showtime cable network picked up the miniseries and produced two more films based on the sequels More Tales of the City and Further Tales of the City.

Maupin continued the saga of his endearing San Francisco eccentrics with Babycakes and Significant Others. He was one of the first fiction writers to deal with the dark time when the AIDS Epidemic hit America. The fun loving gay hero Michael Tolliver (“Mouse”) contracted the disease, and things did not look hopeful for him. The author decided to close the story with Sure of You in 1989, perhaps unable to continue with his beloved “Mouse” facing an early demise. Maupin has since remarked that Anna Madrigal, the transgender landlady of Barbary Lane, visited him in a dream asking “Is it true that you’re not coming to visit us anymore?”

Maybe Mrs. Madrigal continued her nocturnal visits with the dreaming author because her character has a crucial role in Michael Tolliver Lives. The title character is the protagonist of the story, however.  Michael is living as a fifty-year-old HIV survivor.  It’s a little difficult to read about this vivacious, jovial gay man facing midlife with lots of pill-taking (including Viagra) and testosterone therapy.  But the fact that he is still enjoying life will give hope to even those with the most morose midlife crises. 

Maupin, writing in first person for the only time in this series, is most certainly telling us about his own passage through midlife.  Mouse comes to terms with his conservative family and bids a loving, heartfelt goodbye to his mother.  The author must have faced the same situation himself since he, like Mouse, fled his Southern heritage to live in San Francisco. As for Mrs. Madrigal, now an octogenarian, her almost magical, mysterious influence on Michael and her other “children” continues to delight and surprise everyone.