'More Tales of the City' by Armistead Maupin
I read the first book in Armistead Maupin’s much-lauded Tales of the City series back in February and was immediately taken with his witty depictions of life in 1970s San Francisco. I thought it logical to proceed onto the second volume in the series, the appropriately named More Tales of the City which, like its predecessor, was originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle before being collected and issued in book form in 1984.
More Tales of the City more or less picks up where the previous volume left off, with Cleveland transplant Mary Ann Singleton acclimatising to her new life in San Francisco and bonding further with neighbour Michael Tolliver, whom she and others affectionately call ‘Mouse.’ Anna Madrigal, the hippy-ish matriarch of 28 Barbary Lane, is as odd and effusive as ever, doling out doobies left, right and centre and giving motivational speeches as though they were going out of style. Elsewhere, Mona Ramsey leaves the Bay Area on a Greyhound-aided search for enlightenment and ends up discovering more than she bargained for, while high-flying socialite and Halcyon Communications heiress DeDe Day is heavily pregnant with the Chinese delivery boy’s twins. Yep…the excitement never ends on Barbary Lane!
More Tales of the City opens in much the same jovial spirit as its predecessor, albeit with a wider jurisdiction thanks to Mary Ann and Michael’s fateful Mexican cruise and Mona’s impromptu journey along Interstate 80, however things soon take a turn towards the more darkly comedic. Beauchamp Day, DeDe’s cantankerous excuse for a husband, crashes his car into a tunnel and is promptly barbecued, while Mary Ann meets and swiftly falls in love with Burke Andrew, a handsome amnesiac with an inexplicable fear of roses. Not flowers, just roses. Their attempts to explain this give rise to an atmospheric final sequence which is part murder mystery, part utter madness, and one hundred percent Maupin. After all, where else could one hope to read about the exposition of an Episcopalian cannibalism cult?
This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in June 2012.