Make Some New Friends in San Francisco

After Dickens and before The Green Mile, there was another fantastic story that played itself out in episodes printed periodically. Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City started life as a series of columns in the San Francisco Chronicle. That once-a-week start gives Maupin’s tale a fast, crisp feel: chapters are short and often to the point. You are introduced to characters quickly and either like them or not immediately. It makes Tales and its sequels excellent books for the beach, backyards, airplanes and other summer-reading locales.

Tales is set in San Francisco in the 1970s. The protagonist of the book is Mary Ann Singleton, a young woman from the Midwest who visits San Francisco on vacation and decides to stay … much to the consternation of her parents. She moves into an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane where she – and we – meets most of the other characters who will populate the novel. Mona Ramsey is a free spirit taking adventure and fun where she can find it. Mona’s friend, Michael Tolliver is a gay man who moves into Barbary Lane after the latest in a string of break-ups. Brian Hawkins is a waiter who will sleep with any woman who lets him (and many of them let him). And of course there is Mrs. Madrigal, the landlady and den mother of 28 Barbary Lane who cares less about the rent and more that you have a place to call home.

The beauty of these characters is that none are as simple as the above descriptions sound. Like good friends, the characters in Tales of the City grow, reveal their strengths and faults, and become more loveable with each new installment.

At the center of Tales of the City’s fractured plot is a mystery involving a strange new tenant at Barbary Lane and Mary Ann’s Nancy-Drew-like attempts to find out what the guy is up to. Like Dickens, there are multitudinous subplots – from Mona’s affair with a black model who is not what she seems, to Brian and Michael’s night of “cruising” – Brian for women, Michael for men. (“How would that work, exactly?” Michael asks.) And, like any good Dickens novel, the entire package is wrapped up neatly on Christmas Eve.

Throughout it all, Maupin keeps readers laughing. Realizing, maybe, that laugher is a universal language, he makes his characters real to all readers by allowing us to laugh along with them and marvel at the bizarre situations in which they find themselves.

This is the funniest, and yet, the most believable of the Tales of the City novels. Enjoy it this summer and laugh along with some friends you’ll cherish for a lifetime.