The eighth volume in the Tales of the City series. (My thoughts on the previous volume here.)
A mildly meandering visit with several of Maupin's characters. Mary Ann Singleton is at the center of the book; she's returned to San Francisco in need of support from her old friends in the face of calamities both marital and medical. The other viewpoint characters in this installment are not principals from the original series, but second-generation characters -- Michael's young husband, Ben; his business partner, Jake; Mary Ann's estranged stepdaughter, Shawna.
Maupin's been writing about these characters for 35 years now, and it's still an absolute joy to spend time with them. That sense of accumulated history is something that we rarely get in novels, and I like the way Maupin uses the series' longevity as something of a running joke, with the newer/younger characters often being frustrated or bemused by the private jokes and mysterious shared secrets the older characters share.
The actual story, I'm afraid, is a bit on the silly side, with several subplots coming together in a way that is wildly coincidental even by Maupin's somewhat soap opera-ish standards, and involving the unlikely return of a minor character from early in the series. But the Tales of the City series isn't really about plot at this point; it's about the little moments spent with people who matter, and the bonds that develop among the members of what Maupin's matriarch Anna Madrigal calls a logical -- as opposed to biological -- family.
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