Michael Tolliver Lives

Armistead Maupin started writing Tales of the City as a serial in San Francisco newspapers in the mid '70s. It starts out with straight Mary Ann Singleton arriving in San Francisco on vacation from her life in Ohio. She instantly falls in love with the city and decides to stay. She rents an appartment and starts to get to know her neighbors. They turn out to be a diverse group of straight, gay, bisexual, and transgendered free spirits. While each character is fleshed out in mostly equal three dimensional detail, gay man Michael Tolliver quickly becomes the heart and soul around which everything else revolves. He's a sweet, genuine soul without pretense trying to rise above his conservative Southern upbringing and find love and a place for himself in the world.

Even though Armistead Maupin has stated his intention that Michael Tolliver Lives is an independent novel that stands alone from the series, in reality it is an extension. All the main characters from the series appear. And even though backgrounds are provided, I don't think you can fully appreciate the emotional impact of this book without having read the previous six. But the good news is the series is a very easy, entertaining read. The first four books have very short chapters and are mostly dialogue. I've always admired Maupin's writing and how he's able to create such rich characters without much descriptive prose.

The sixth book, Sure of You, ends in the early '80s. Michael Tolliver is happily setting up house keeping with his partner, but he's HIV+ and doesn't know how much time he's got to enjoy his hard won happiness. So for those of us that read all of the books many times and have loved the characters, especially Michael, the publishing of this book is very much like finding out that someone we lost track of, and missed, and always wondered if the new medications found him in time, but we were afraid they hadn't when so many were lost; lives. If that makes sense to you, then maybe you understand why I was crying before I started reading it.

In the '50s and '60s, when Lord of the Rings was gaining popularity, Frodo Lives!! was often seen as graffiti. Like Frodo, one quickly gets the sense that if Michael Tolliver can't do it; can't find love and happiness and a place for himself; then no one can.

For this book, Armistead Maupin has switched to first person, telling the story directly from Michael's point of view. Michael is 20 years older, doing well on new meds, and enjoying creating a life with a new, younger man. He's still best friends with Brian Hawkins and he still looks after his former landlady, Mrs. Madrigal. His father died a few years ago and his mother is in a nursing home and failing. Michael goes to visit her with his new husband and she shocks him by asking him to be in charge of her Living Will. The only question this book asks is: What will he do when he gets the call that his mother has died, then gets the call that his spiritual mother may not make it through the night?