by Armistead Maupin.
I read this on during my unhappy day in the airport earlier this month. I really do enjoy Armistead's writing. I enjoyed getting "caught up" with all my favorite characters from The City series. I had read a quote from him previously stating that this is not a sequel or continuation of that series. Before reading the book, I thought...how could this possibly be. It's about Michael Tolliver, in SanFran....must be a sequel. And now that I read it...I think I know what he meant. It is not the same. There is no quirky cloak and dagger mystery for Mary Ann (who is pretty much only an after thought in this book). It's kind of horribly sentimental. For a distraction from the fiasco that was my day, it was nice. I'm also intersted in reading the next installment...Mary Ann in Autumn.
4 comments:
I really wanted to read this, and then I didn't.
I was kind of nervous about it, because he was SO angry when he wrote Sure of You, and turned some of the characters (esp. Mary Ann) into people I just did not see them becoming (and I don't think he would've gone in that direction if he hadn't been so profoundly pissed off at the world).
He seems to have mellowed with age, and his anger has too (not that his anger was hard to understand, but it DID make his books unpleasant). Did that show in the book?
My favorite is still the very first Tales of the City. There's just a really great sense of adventure in the book.
He is much less angry; there is a strong element of healing and forgiveness in the book. It is a book about Michael though. And I wish I knew more about who Brian and Anna grew into. I felt that Brian & Mary Ann's daughter was one dementional as well. I hope that his next book brings some legitmacy to Mary Ann's choices.
I need to say more...I feel like the book let's Michael forgive people's short comings, but didn't go in depth enough to understand WHY they made their choices. One element I liked about this series was how everyone's motivations, fears, and wishes played off each other. People may have been hurt in the end, but it wasn't intentional. With Michael being the only well developed character, the ensemble cast sense of the first six novels is gone.
I could really get behind the lack of an ensemble, if he somehow conveyed the fact that they'd outgrown each other. Because, really, how many people (um, besides us) remain friends with people from that phase of our lives? It kind of fits, if they've all grown apart and have different lives. But he'd need a way to convey that. Maybe he has one, I haven't read the book yet. But I almost like that idea better, sort of the way you would've liked it better if Clint Eastwood died at the end of In The Line of Fire. And I said that way far away from you so you can't hit me in the temple for saying that.
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