Tales Of The City

Book excerpt: The first novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga, is an uproariously moving novel and an indelible portrait of cultural change from the seventies. Named as one of the BBC’s 100 Most Inspiring Novels, a PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick and Britain’s favourite gay/lesbian novel from The Big Gay Read ____________________ Originally serialised in the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1970s, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City afforded a mainstream audience of millions its first exposure to straight and gay characters experiencing on equal terms the follies of urban life. Among the cast of this ground-breaking saga are the lovelorn residents of 28 Barbary Lane: the bewildered but aspiring Mary Ann Singleton, the libidinous Brian Hawkins; Mona Ramsey, still in a sixties trance, Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, forever in bright-eyed pursuit of Mr. Right; and their marijuana-growing landlady, the indefatigable Mrs. Madrigal. Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads them through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.