Michael Tolliver Lives (novel)
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| Michael Tolliver Lives | |
 US 1st edition cover |
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| Author | Armistead Maupin |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Tales of the City |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Publication date | June 2007 |
| Media type | Hardback |
| Pages | 288 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-060-76135-0 |
| Preceded by | Sure of You |
Michael Tolliver Lives is a 2007 novel by Armistead Maupin.
Though Maupin has stated that Michael Tolliver Lives is "not a continuation of Tales of the City," the novel focuses on Tales character Michael, now in his fifties and living as an HIV-positive man. [1] It also features appearances by familiar Tales characters, such as Anna Madrigal. In a 2007 Entertainment Weekly article Maupin said, "I was interested in pursuing the life of an aging gay man, and Michael was the perfect vehicle ... However, as soon as I started writing, I found that, one by one, all the other characters stepped forward and asked to be present. It felt natural, so I went with it." [2] Maupin calls it "a smaller, more personal novel than I've written in the past." [1]
Entertainment Weekly also reported that Maupin's next project is another Tales volume, with the author stating "Whatever I have to offer seems to come through those characters ... And I see no reason to abandon them." [2]
The first five books in the Tales of the City series were originally serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle or the San Francisco Examiner; Michael Tolliver Lives and its predecessor, Sure of You, were written solely as novels.
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[edit] Plot summary
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Amazon.com says the following of Maupin's novel:
Michael Tolliver, the sweet-spirited Southerner in Armistead Maupin's classic Tales of the City series, is arguably one of the most widely loved characters in contemporary fiction. Now, almost twenty years after ending his ground-breaking saga of San Francisco life, Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero, letting the fifty-five-year-old gardener tell his story in his own voice. Having survived the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers, Michael has learned to embrace the random pleasures of life, the tender alliances that sustain him in the hardest of times. Michael Tolliver Lives follows its protagonist as he finds love with a younger man, attends to his dying fundamentalist mother in Florida, and finally reaffirms his allegiance to a wise octogenarian who was once his landlady. Though this is a stand-alone novel — accessible to fans of Tales of the City and new readers alike — a reassuring number of familiar faces appear along the way. As usual, the author's mordant wit and ear for pitch-perfect dialogue serve every aspect of the story — from the bawdy to the bittersweet. Michael Tolliver Lives is a novel about the act of growing older joyfully and the everyday miracles that somehow make that possible.[3]
[edit] Reviews
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Maupin denies that this is a seventh volume of his beloved Tales of the City, but — happily — that's exactly what it is, with style and invention galore. When we left the residents of 28 Barbary Lane, it was 1989, and Michael "Mouse" Tolliver was coping with the supposed death sentence of HIV. Now, improved drug cocktails have given him a new life, while regular shots of testosterone and doses of Viagra allow him a rich and inventive sex life with a new boyfriend, Ben, "twenty-one years younger than I am — an entire adult younger, if you must insist on looking at it that way." Number 28 Barbary Lane itself is no more, but its former tenants are doing well, for the most part, in diaspora. Michael's best friend, ladies' man Brian Hawkins, is back, and unprepared for his grown daughter, Shawna, a pansexual it-girl journalist à la Michelle Tea, to leave for a New York career. Mrs. Madrigal, the transsexual landlady, is still radiant and mysterious at age 85. Maupin introduces a dazzling variety of real-life reference points, but the story belongs to Mouse, whose chartings of the transgressive, multigendered sex trends of San Francisco are every bit as lovable as Mouse's original wet jockey shorts contest in the very first Tales, back in 1978. — Publishers Weekly [3]
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