Michael Tolliver Lives is the sequel to Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. The book is set a couple of decades later and serves as a study of the years changed San Francisco. The protagonist, Michael, is the lens through which these changes are displayed, his youth serving as a kind of touchstone. In this narrative, Michael is 40 and struggling to cope with the changes around him. His world has so completely transformed that the answers which have served him for so many years suddenly seem incompatible.
Rather than relegating Michael's angst to the wasteland of "midlife crises," Maupin explores in detail how Michael's world has been transformed. He experiences a kind of displacement, looking around at the city and even the people. His family is no help, since they're dealing with the approaching death of his mom. For Michael, this is just another facet of a puzzle which is his own inability to cope with the weight of these changes. He's not unhappy, but he is suffering. All those years fighting disease and believing he was participating in a revolution among his peers seem almost cheapened when Michael talks to people like Ben who just don't understand how significant that time was to Michael personally and to the culture.
