Babycakes

Never imagine for a moment that Author Maupin is lacking in spinal steel: He kills off a character, a lovely and belovèd character, with the sangfroid of a CIA-trained assassin. It was a painful loss, but it resonated with what was happening in our lives about that time (1984). And there's nothing in any universe anywhere that makes losing someone you've loved easy.

Why I don't rate the read higher than three stars is simple: Author Maupin lost control of his cast. Scattered from pillar to post, incoherence of events plagues the story, and that severely limits my pleasure in the read. I won't re-read it, but the issue of its uncenteredness is only part of the reason.

wow.
the thing i like very most about the tales of the city novels is the way in which they are capsules of san francisco history, snapshots based on real places and real people, with a healthy dose of absurdity thrown in. they are lightly-sleazy real-time soap operas of a city i happen to like quite a bit, of a time i feel nostalgic for, despite barely being alive on the other side of the continent.
this installment brings us screeching into the 80's, with a direct stop at the AIDS epidemic. it hurts, it is painful to read, but that is not what causes me to like this book less than the others.
this book also brings us into the 80's, and the characters that i have grown to expect and stand by so stalwartly have kinda become ... well ... show more jerks. sign of the times, i guess.
not all of them are jerks. not nearly. but for a book that boasts nearly half of the returning characters of the previous installments, the jerk:not jerk ratio is way skewed in favor of the jerks.
sigh.
still, it is true, and good, it just doesn't seem as true or good as the first three books, which seems like a funny thing to write about these plot lines. but no matter how ridiculous they get, the first three books feel so much more true.
or maybe i'm feeling too romantic right now. too much wine, i guess.
sigh. show less

A fun and heartfelt read as always, with an enjoyable American-in-London setup that doesn't romanticize the UK.

My only caveat is that while I enjoyed the wacky baby-making plot arc, the resolution throws a minor character under the bus to further the arc of our main characters, in a manner that I found distasteful.

Read this in print, but apparently Alan Cumming narrates the audiobook(!)

Things start getting a bit darker after the third book: AIDS has shifted Maupin's focus a bit, and he's beginning to get a bit tired of some of his characters. Mona and Mrs Madrigal are reduced to walk-on parts; Mary Ann still has plenty to do in this one, but she has become a far less sympathetic character than she was in the earlier books. Maupin makes the most of the opportunities for comedy that arise out of Michael going to England, and he gives some more depth to the character of Brian, so there's still plenty to smile about, but it doesn't really feel as though there's much ground for optimism.

Very fun book!.. I very much enjoyed the first 3 of this series, and this followed suit perfectly. It is silly...sit-com silly......many of the characters are really caricatures - stereotypical....but Maupin makes you love them and root for them in spite of all their silly stereotypicalness (nice word, huh?).....nice compact chapters that jump from scene to scene and you keep reading cuz you have to find out how they survive their ridiculous situations. I read the others quite a few years ago and the characters and their connections came a little slowly at first, but it eventually all clicked. A little too many drugs taken way too casually to suit me, but we are talking about San Francisco in the early 1980's. No Pulitzer here, but an show more awful lot of fun! show less

This is the fourth book in The Tales of the City series and probably the best. The 2nd & 3rd books descended into near stupidity, but this book brings Maupin's characters back older, wiser, and more socially aware. This is one of the first works of fiction to deal with the scourge of AIDS. Still, it remains very funny and heartwarming.

Mary Ann is a lot harder to connect with in this book. Her actions in this book are a far cry from the Mary Ann of the first three Tales of the City stories. Still a great read if you're in the mood for a well-written San Francisco soap opera.