Book Seven of the Tales of the City series is important because it reintroduced Armistead Maupin's iconic series to an entirely new generation of readers. Published eighteen years after Book Six, it San Francisco of the early twenty first century with the San Francisco of the 'eighties. There are huge differences, but the differences that can be seen in the city as a whole are nowhere near as gaping as the differences seen within the city's gay community. The book's main theme is aging, which some of the central characters do with much more grace than others.
The book is written in the first person - which makes this another first in the series, which had previously been penned using a third person narrator. As the title suggests, the protagonist is middle aged, HIV positive Michael Tolliver, and the narrative is built around his reminiscences, his views of San Francisco and his family, who largely reject his homosexuality.
Critics were not so much gushing as downright excited by the book. Many described reading it as an experience similar to catching up with long lost friends on social media; they were genuinely interested in what the series' characters had been doing for the past eighteen years.
This book was followed by a further two in the Tales of the City series, making it nine books long in all. Maupin was one of the first writers to address the subject of the AIDS epidemic in his writing, and to humanize the subject as well. The first books in the series were serialized on television and starred Oscar-winner Olympia Dukakis, and Laura Linney.
Maupin received the Barbary Coast Award at the San Francisco Literary Festival in 2007.
