Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel

A continuation of the stories of our long-time friends from Barbary Lane. Mary Anne isn't the most sympathetic character, but compounded crises in her life bring everyone together to show their best sides--and give Mary Anne the chance to grow beyond herself.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book,much more than his last. It was a very fast read and I hated to see it end. Just wish they would do more mini series before the actors are to old or gone. I am hungry for another trip down Barbary Lane.

Maupin is back, and our beloved denizens of San Francisco are alive and current in the twenty first century. Full of warmth and humor, and bursting with surprises, "Mary Ann in Autumn" is a worthy member of the Tales of the City family.

This is probably mostly for fans if Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels. I enjoyed it and thought it was entertaining and well written. This may not be worth reading unless you are really into the series. It probably doesn't stand alone.

Like hearing from long, lost friends on Facebook, rediscovering these characters was a surprise and delight, mixed with just a tinge of sadness that the years have passed and we've all grown older. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the original books. Can't wait to read The Days of Anna Madrigal.

Once again Armistead Maupin gives us another wonderful book in the Tales of the City Series. Just as Michael the Mouse has grown older so have his friends. We are treated to Marianne, Anna Madrigal two of our favorites from the original series. A must for all Tales of the City fans.

In the continuing tradition of Maupin the author has provided some answers to past books involving his quiltwork cast of characters. While the book gives us resolutions on some unanswered issues it leaves one begging for more.
It is an easy and enjoyable read.

Just loved spending time with all these characters again! Maupin has such a way with weaving stories together and bringing back things that i'd forgotten about. Loved this book and hope there will be story after story to continue this series!

Such an enjoyable story to read.... just like coming home and seeing old friends... that you haven't seen in a long time.... Armistead does it again.... My only complaint, I finished it in a day.... I was left wanting more more more.......

Tales of the City is such an enduring pleasure that one can almost forgive Maupin for milking this tired cow yet one more time, but this is such a sloppy mess of lame contrivances that one can't quite muster the necessary forbearance. I hope he is ready to try a new subject again soon. And he should stop with the tedious digs on Darien--where, unlike San Francisco, gay and lesbian couples can go down to Town Hall, get a license and get married---and maybe even have their openly gay and married State Senator officiate.

"Mary Ann in Autumn" is Armistead Maupin's eighth novel in the "Tales of the City" stories. My suggestion would be, if you're not familiar with this wonderful series, to start at the beginning and read them in order. If you already are famliar with and have read the previous books, then it won't take you long to become very comfortable with what, over the years, have become good friends. Suffice it to say Mary Ann is the catalyst that brings them all together, her story around which it all flows. It's hard to believe most of these characters made their way into book form over thirty years ago. Maupin's charactes have become such good literary friends over those years, and any chance, such as provided by this latest book, to spend time with them once again is a treat indeed.

My first introduction to "Tales of the City" was back in the early 90's, when a friend, an avid reader, passed the first book onto me, suggesting I'd probably enjoy it. And enjoy it I did, promptly, through our local library, seeking out the remaining five books, all then available, in the series, suggesting to other friends that they must read the books, that they were in for a very special experience.

A regret for this fan, and probably for the author, is that, though several of the books made their ways to the screen and were wonderfully cast (imagine...Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney!), this probably will not be the fate of the remaining books. But Armistead Maupin is such a skilled storyteller that, screen treatment aside, it all comes vividly to life through his writing.

After I had read the first six books, I sent a letter to Maupin, through the books' publisher. I was thrilled to receive the nicest of replies to my "thank you" to him; I remember stating in my letter, "I had never heard of you until my friend had introduced me through the first book." In his letter to me, he said, "Don't apologize. I didn't know who you were either until I received your letter." Over the years I've made a point, now through e-mail addresses if available, of contacting authors whose works, on completion of a book, left me feeling I'd just had the best of reading experiences. Maupin's response to my letter is a treasured one among many I've received from so many authors.

Anyhow, I'm not telling you anything more about "Mary Ann in Autumn" other than, if you've not read the previous books, start at the beginning. And if you are familiar, well, then, this latest brings so much of the gang back for a more than satisfying reading experience.

With a creatively appropriate title, MARY ANN IN AUTUMN reads like a letter from a long-lost friend, catching up on 18 years of intrigue. In the true spirit of the Tales of the City series that earned Armistead Maupin fame, this is his eighth. Maupin's masterpiece has sassy insight into all three genders --- and those lost in between --- in the City by the Bay. Welcome back, Mary Ann, "Michael's favorite drama queen!!!"

When Mary Ann "rolled into town with a fresh steaming load of drama, Michael parenthesized his head with his hands." She is now 57, on the lam from her philandering second husband in Connecticut --- and a secret inside that she cannot hide. Point-of-view character Mary Ann Singleton has matured. She now shares the stage with Michael "Mouse" Tolliver's much younger husband, Ben. Does this portend a shift to Ben's POV to take the series into the next three decades?

True to the naiveté of the Mary Ann in Maupin's original newspaper series, she sets up her first Facebook page --- and gets an alarming message, taking her back to true drama that ensnared her roughly 30 years before. "[E]verything around her was familiar but somehow foreign. She was no more a San Franciscan than the doughy woman in a...sweatshirt climbing off the cable car." More shocking than an earthquake, she is no longer an optimistic Pollyanna. Cancer can do that.

Maupin gives the speed-read version, bringing readers up to...well, speed. Mary Ann had married and divorced lothario Brian Hawkins and adopted Connie from Cleveland's daughter, Shawna, who is hauntingly reminiscent of Mona Ramsey. Mary Ann had achieved fleeting TV fame, become estranged from Shawna, and moved back east in the late '80s, where she married über-rich Bob. Integral Anna Madrigal (portrayed by Olympia Dukakis in a three-part miniseries) is now pushing 90 and has had a stroke that cannot flag her spirit, though she is "about to shuffle off this mortal coil."

Now there is gender-bending Jake Greenleaf, Michael's landscaping business partner. Michael is HIV-positive and has wed Ben. DeDe Halcyon has married D'orothea Wilson and is a grandmother! Jake befriends confused Jonah Flake, a Mormon missionary petitioning for California's Proposition 8. Sex blogger Shawna and friend Otto meet "a homeless woman in a dirty red tracksuit." Seemingly unimportant, she becomes as prominent as Lombard Street.

What appears to be Maupin's mishmash of "capital-F Friends" is more like an intricate jigsaw puzzle with interlocking pieces: Take out one and the picture is incomplete. Mystery and intrigue tie tangential characters together like twine. And there's a kick-in-the-crotch ending that could not have been anticipated.

In a poignant discussion about fidelity in marriage, and his ambiguous vows with Ben, Michael tells Mary Ann: "If monogamy becomes more important than fidelity, you're bound to get hurt. It's all the lying that clobbers you, not the sex. [H]aving to keep something secret can drive a huge wedge between you."

Maupin works magic; he made me feel young again, flashing back to the days of 28 Barbary Lane. Like so many brilliantly colored ribbons, Maupin ties his characters into a beautiful bow, to decorate this perfect gift for the holidays. With writing as rich as San Francisco's Golden Era, this tale of the city strikes the mother lode.

--- Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy

My race through the original six books that make up TALES OF THE CITY can only be described as a reading orgy. I think I went through them all in a week. Then, some years ago I read book #7 before losing track of Armistead Maupin. When I discovered he had written two more books in the series, I decided to save them for a vacation treat.

I went through Mary Ann in Autumn during the first day of vacation, once again enchanted by the characters of Mary Ann, Mouse, and Anna Madrigal. There was Maupin's same easy, conversational style and humor and the same knack for capturing precisely what makes the baby boomer generation (including me) both distinctive and ridiculous.

Now well into middle age, Mary Ann is facing multiple crises -- both personal and health-- when she once again turns to her good friend Michael (aka Mouse) for support. There are some new characters, representing the continuum of sexual identity, all of whom wind up being strangely interconnected in the small town of San Francisco. If you're a baby boomer, this is a MUST read.

Michael Tolliver, Mary Ann Singleton and the divine Mrs. Anna Madrigal are back after we last saw them in MICHAEL TOLLIVER LIVES. They of course are older-- Michael and Mary Ann are fifty-seven, each with grey hair now. Mouse, a long time survivor of HIV, has a gut (lipodystrophy) because of his medications. Mary Ann, faced with two major life crises, returns to San Franciso into the arms of her "logical" as opposed to "biological" family. Mrs. Madrigal is fragile as only the very old are. Reuniting with these and other returning characters from Maupin's previous seven TALES OF THE CITY novels is pure pleasure. The author also introduces several new characters just as "messed up"-- some considerably more so than our old friends.

This novel, like all the previous ones, is firmly placed in the here and now: the events take place after the election of President Obama and the defeat of Proposition 8 in California. There are references to Hillary Clinton, Hurricane Katrina and Conan O'Brien. And for us old-timers, Maupin dredges from the past John Denver's "Country Roads" and Claudine Longet, the ex-wife of Andy Williams, who shot her ski-bum boyfriend Spider in Aspen, Colordado way back in the 1970's. The author gets his licks in against the Mormon Chuch's efforts that helped defeat Proposition 8 through the character of one Jonah Flake (aptly named), a sad, misguided young Mormon missionary. In his quiet, clever way, Maupin sounds a note for intergenerational relationships and the transgendered community. Because of Mrs. Madrigal and Michael's colleague Jake, Shawna Hawkins says she is compelled "to live in the genderless neutrality of the human heart."

Since we are all quietly aging here, MARY ANN IN AUTUMN has a bittersweet autumnal edge to it: Mary Ann opines that "It all goes so fast. . . We dole out our lives in dinner parties and plane flights, and it's over before we know it. We lose everyone we love, if they don't lose us first, and every single thing we do is intended to distract us from tha reality." (Didn't one of Thornton Wilder's characters, the stage manager, in "Our Town" say something similar and T. S. Eliot's Prufrock as well?) And another character reminds us that "we still have the moment. That's all anybody has." On the other hand, on a much lighter note, surely only Mr. Maupin, the grand master of detail, would mention the half-moon paper on a toilet seat.

Finally MARY ANN IN AUTUMN is the writer's continuing valentine to that city of cities, San Francisco, which for many of us is our Jerusalem.

I finished this warm, delightful book in one evening, a perfect and fitting way to begin the month of November.

'Mary Ann in Autumn' is yet another installment of 'Tales of the City' series. And it delivers what you'd expect: well drawn characters, excellent writing and giving the reader a feel for life in San Francisco. The story itself is a collection of interwoven vignettes surrounding Mary Ann's return to San Francisco. It is largely forgettable, but fans of this book series seem to be more in love with the characters than whatever the plot might offer. Conversely if you have not read the entire series prior to this book then you will not fully appreciate it.

Bottom line: a trifling addition to the series that will not disappoint its many fans. Recommended.

Since Armistead Maupin first created his beloved characters way back in 1974, we've been thrilled with the comings and goings of Mary Ann, Michael, Brian, Mona and Anna Madrigal. Through a series of six books we followed characters that lived, laughed and loved in a way that was relatable and touching. As the 1980's came to an end so seemed the adventures of our friends. Now Maupin has given his faithful readers more doses of his characters - first with Michael Tolliver Lives and now a new installment - Mary Ann in Autumn. While Maupin may not have called Michael Tolliver Lives an official Tales of the City novel (it did depart in style from the other books, told in the first person), the world of Mary Ann picks up soon after where Michael Tolliver left off. This time the focus of the book is on the titular Mary Ann, who also served as the center point for the first Tales of the City. Nearly twenty years have passed since Mary Ann left her husband, child and emotional family to pursue her career in New York, and now she returns to the city that helped her grow up, looking for old friends and healing from illness. To lesson complications, Maupin has sent her ex-husband out of the road, RVing across America, so the focus of the book can be upon Mary Ann and her relations to old friends Anna and Michael, and with the daughter she left behind. All of the characters have aged, and aged well, still full of wisdom and life, albeit a bit grayer and slower. The subtext of many of the characters is the facing of mortality. HIV Positive Michael has lived with this since the original books and yet twenty years later he's still alive and kicking. Others are facing old age, and cancer. Throughout it all, despite conflict and history, the idea of family being those we love shines through every page.

The book is a wonderful visit with old friends, as well as some new ones introduced in Michael Tolliver. As usual, Maupin writes stories that are not going to be wrapped up in a neat bow. Things to come are hinted at as potential future stories that Maupin may or may not work with. But not all the stories ring true. A subplot involving Michael's assistant, Jake, and a Mormon Missionary does not really gain any traction and go anywhere. It seemed to be the author's attempt to address the Mormon role in the passage of Proposition 8 in 2008, overturning a law allowing same-sex marriages. In an attempt to bring some conflict and shock to the story, a couple of characters not heard from since the original novel make reappearances and provide an interesting, and poignant, punch to the story, but seem to be a bit too convenient and neat. Still the book was extremely enjoyable - the literary equivalent of comfort food. Definitely a good time, and makes those of us fans hope that there are still more visits to our friends to come in the future.

The Book Report: At fifty-seven, Mary Ann Singleton Hawkins Caruthers has blown up her life again and come running back to the loving, welcoming arms of Mouse Tolliver, her first friend in San Francisco. The catch is, Mouse is now happily married to thirtysomething bear-daddy fancier Ben, who is less than enthralled with Mrs. Caruthers. Considering the dual crises buffeting Mary Ann, she feels entitled to come on in and set a spell anyway, and thus the plot starts moving. Mary Ann's crises, one real and the other simply her drama queen self coming to the fore, cause some tensions in San Francisco; she doesn't have to deal with her ex-husband, but pretty much all the other Barbary Lane survivors show up and interact with her, though less so with each other. A bomb from the past shows up. A BIG bomb. The resolution of that dangling storyline from book 2 (More Tales of the City), I believe, is as messy as the original ending was tidy...though both were very *purses lips* tidy-tidy in their own ways. A fitting end to this book, though, clearing the decks for Mary Ann to return to the fold. And so set us up for another book.

My Review: Maupin's trademark suds; if you like it (and I do), you'll like this latest entry in the "Tales" saga. I wondered as I wandered if some of these plots were strictly speaking *necessary*, but honestly I felt so smoothly engulfed and solicitously engaged by the mother-henning of Maupin's consistently high quality writing about these dear and familiar and aging, even becoming elderly and frail, characters that, well, I checked my coincidence-flensing knife at the door. I missed it a few times, but at the door it stayed.

I'm growing older. I find that fact reasonably agreeable most of the time, except that every once in a way I feel left out of the storytelling that makes younger people sit up and take notice. Usually it's because I've been there and done that and even have the copyright-1975 book to prove that this NEW! NOW! HAPPENIN! trope is recycled. But even the Bible is new to someone who's never read it before. And the fact is, sometimes old familiar faces are more fun to spend time with. So novelty palls, failing to be novel anymore. But the solid, tried-and-true tropes of a series of books about a group of people who remind me of me learning and groping for meaning and relevance in a world that disconcertingly looks a lot like mine but is very *un*like it in some key ways strikes a welcome chord in me.

And, like my own life, Maupin injects new people into his characters' ambits, most all of them younger, most all of them groping and seeking in ways that we *think* we'll outgrow. Reading this book, I'm soothed to realize I'm not the only one who hasn't stopped groping and seeking...and that not only is that okay, but it's a large part of the reason new friendships are possible. A worhty take-away from this warm, cozy fireplace read of a book.

"Mary Ann in Autumn" is an entertaining continuation of "Tales of the City" and proves that the series still has plenty to say for its legions of long-term readers and younger audiences as well. It has the long absent (from SF) Mary Ann Singleton returning to California with a lot of serious baggage in tow, hoping to find solace with old friends and start a new phase of her life. Readers of this episode of TOTC who haven't been following the series will discover that Michael Tolliver (Mouse) has been anchored in SF all this time and has finally settled into a loving relationship with a younger man (Ben) who dotes on the bear that boomer Michael has become. Also on hand to welcome Mary Ann are DeDe and D'Or, the A-list lesbian couple who have prospered mightily after a few harrowing early years in Guyana and Cuba. Anna Madrigal, the dowager who succors all of the characters in this series, is still afloat and still a rock around which the story flows. Shawna, Mary Ann's stepdaughter, is back in the city also and is trying to sort out a mystery as well as her own feelings about her relationship with amiable and smart street entertainer. A new character in Jake Greenleaf--a trans-gendering young man--appears and brings an appealing and rather complex new perspective to the story.

The book is a great reunion with old friends and hopefully signals that the series has been restarted and another episode will be added soon. There are loose ends to be dealt with and a vast audience waiting for another visit with the family.

Mary Ann Singleton is back in San Francisco (from Connecticut) after two personal calamities have knocked her off course. She had fled the city twenty years before, to escape a bad marriage; she left her adopted daughter behind as well.

Now she is staying with two old friends, Michael Tolliver and his partner Ben, hoping to sort out the mess of her life in the nurturing comfort provided by friendship.

The story reveals an intriguing cast of characters that includes Michael and his business partner Jake, who is undergoing transgender surgeries, officially changing from female to male. Then there is Ben, who spends time every day in the dog park, where he meets unusual people, including a man named Cliff. And finally, there is also Anna Madrigal, who is an elderly woman who has been like a touchstone for these friends, both in the past and in the present.

Meanwhile, Shawna, the girl "left behind" by Mary Ann all those years ago, is focused on her popular sex blog, much to the occasional annoyance of her boyfriend Otto. While traversing the city, Shawna connects with a homeless woman to whom she feels strangely connected.

At Michael and Ben's garden cottage, Mary Ann has discovered Facebook and in the process of accepting friend requests, she is "stalked" by a curiously disturbing person called Fogbound One.

Since Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel is part of a series called Tales of the City, all of these characters have a history chronicled in previous tomes; this one felt like a brief glimpse of a life at a particular moment in time, but with several threads from the past finally coming together in the end.

Surprisingly, the connections mesh quickly in this rather short book of 287 pages, but even with just this brief look into the lives of these characters, I felt as though I had come to know them. Now I want to read the other books in the series. Five stars.

In Maupin's second attempt at a renaissance of his popular "Tales of the City" series, readers are whisked back to a San Francisco cast where much has changed in 30 years, yet somehow much still remains the same. Michael is happily in love with a man at least 20 years his junior. Mrs. Madrigal, despite getting on in years, remains charmingingly eccentric. The titular character, Mary Ann, has returned to her chosen "home" to deal with several issues of her own. In her return to her Barbary Lane stomping ground, there were parallels to Mary Ann's first view of San Francisco back in the 70s, when she sought an escape from the ordinariness and conformity that was Cleveland, Ohio. In "Autumn" Mary Ann makes a similar escape -- this time from Darien, Conn. (I thought of the line from "Mame" about an "Aryan from Darien.")

In all, the novel was great reading, cozy to settle in with a familar cast of characters and play catch-up. Some loose ends were surprisingly revealed as supporting characters took center stage and their intertwined lives reached, for good or for bad, some resolutions.

The only false note in the novel was when Maupin tried to ape the speech patterns of 20-something young men. Maybe it's a San Francisco thing, but "dude" (even when addressing a young woman) seemed to be the author's go-to word. The effect was to have these male characters sound like idiots (but perhaps this was intentional). Mercifully, these encounters between the male 20-somethings were limited, but still proved a jarring note to the regular flow of the narrative.