Jay has asked me to provide a blurb for Tales of the City, so here it is. Tales of the City is a series of six books by the American writer Armistead Maupin. He first started publishing it as a sort of continuous daily serial in a newspaper in San Francisco in the Seventies, and later they were collected as novels. So the books are full of short chapters with multiple storylines and many characters weaving through the books. It is _not_ a purely gay storyline. Yes, if there's a central character its Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, who's gay, as Maupin is, and gay and lesbian themes form a major part of the books. But there are others, and its best to see the books as a portrait of San Francisco at that time, of people much like those Maupin knew.
The books are wonderful. Maupin writes with great charm and cheerfulness and love of his characters. You fall in love with them (OK, a bit more in love with Mouse than others [though then again there are some perverse people like my friend Rosalita who fell in love with Beauchamp Day who's the number one slimeball. Then again, in the TV series he's played by ultra cutie Thomas Gibson who plays Greg in 'Dharma & Greg']) You really get into the complicated lives and loves of all those in the boarding house at Barbary Lane, the centre of the action.
The main characters are, as I said, Mouse; Jon, his gorgeous doctor boyfriend; Mona, his lesbian/bi fed-up with advertising copywriter friend; Brian, the uncomplicatedly straight activist turned waiter; Mary-Anne, the straight laced small town girl come to make it big in the big bad city; and actually so many more characters I'm going to give up right now, except I've left the best for last - Mrs.Madrigal, the landlady of the house, totally serene and at ease with herself (the marijuana plants in her garden may have something to do with this), but who still has a rather startling secret of her own (and it only comes out in the second series, so you'll have to either wait till we get that or read the books).
What Jay has is the PBS adaptation of the first book. Its supposed to be a really good, lovingly detailed adaptation of the book. Its got rave reviews and the second series was supposed to be as good as the first. I guess they'll be making at least the third book into a TV series as well, though after that I don't know. The first three books are the perfect balance of story and fun, though by the third its increasingly frenetic. From the fourth onwards though the books become inevitably darker because of the shadow of AIDS.
And not just that, the characters change, and while Mouse remains dependably loveable, and Mrs Madrigal as serene as ever, others become more complex and ambiguous. Maupin's skills as a writer are there in plenty, but the sixth book is definitely a bit of drag, which is why he stopped at that. Still, it doesn't really matter, since by then you are hooked and will have to read it. For those who want to, the books are intermittently available over here, though not as much as they should be. I never saw them for years, and got my aunt in the US to send me copies, but now I'm seeing them again. For some odd reason, the one place I've always found odd copies is in the second hand bookshops on Free School Street in Calcutta. Come and see the series on Saturday, but definitely try and get your hands on the books.
