Michael Tolliver Lives

by Armistead Maupin

Book Overview

Inspiration for the Netflix Limited Series, Tales of the City The seventh novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin's best-selling San Francisco saga. Nearly two decades after ending his groundbreaking Tales of the City saga of San Francisco life, Armistead Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero Michael Tolliver--the fifty-five-year-old sweet-spirited gardener and survivor of the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers--for...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060761369
• ISBN13: 9780060761363
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Like seeing an old friend...

Every moment while reading this novel was filled with that feeling I get when I meet a long lost friend on a subway platform -- Unexpected, unplanned, but the best moment of the week. Michael has aged like all of us, and is happy -- or as happy as Michael, or any of us can be. Finally a novel that doesn't revolve around HIV, while touching respectfully on it. What a pleasure to get back in touch with Michael, Anna, Marianne, Brian, and a whole new generation of characters, while catching up on all the others. Anyone who enjoyed the others for that sense of reading them and seeing old friends will love this novel.

Michael Tolliver Lives

This was a real romp down memory lane, and I really enjoyed it. Having lived in San Francisco when "Tales of the City" was being written, I have always enjoyed the series. However, after the first couple of books the plot line became too far fetched for me. Reading "Michael Tolliver Lives", brought back so many places and events that I hadn't thought about in years. As I continued reading, I felt like I was back in 'The City' catching up with old friends.

A GAY HERO TO BE PROUD OF

If anyone had a reason to give up on life and to prepare simply to die, it would have been Michael Tolliver at the end of the sixth installment of the TALES OF THE CITY series SURE OF YOU. He had acquired HIV and like all of the other gay men of the time in this same predicament, he expected not to live much past the early nineteen-nineties. Instead, with the publication of a seventh book entitled MICHAEL TOLLIVER LIVES, we find him not only alive, but still funny and vibrant at the age of fifty-five. True, his body has changed some (he's acquired a bit of a tummy) and he's not still the young adorable "Mouse" that won the Boxer Shorts Dance Contest when we first met him, but he has other things going for him like stamina, loyalty, integrity, and best of all a love of life that has allowed him to grab happiness where he finds it whether it be his love for making things grow, supporting a friend, or giving or taking from the new love of his life the things that they both need. In Michael, Armistead Maupin has finally given us a middle-aged gay male character that we can point to and say: "See, it is posssible to grow old gracefully and maintain a gay lifestyle." I'm still looking for a Michael and like him I choose to think that love is possible even for middle-aged gay men. It doesn't have to be someone younger like in his case; just send me someone like Michael Tolliver whether he's a little younger, my age, or older and I'll marry him in a minute. The key is that like Michael, we need to learn to love who we are. A college psycholigist once asked me how I felt about being in love with a man. I told him that didn't bother me at all that my problem was he didn't love me back. I could and should have added that falling in love with a man was the first thing I'd ever done that I knew was right!

NOT A SEQUEL BUT A GREAT REUNION

If, like me, you're a huge fan of Maupin's TALES OF THE CITY novels, you're probably hoping his latest book is the sequel you've always dreamed of. It isn't. It's much more like a twentieth reunion, allowing brief reconnections with long missed friends, but not the continuation of an old familiar story. Yes, Michael/Mouse and Anna and Brian are still around, but times have changed and so has the plot. The exciting ironies of a youthful and madly whimsical age have been replaced by a new and more structured reality guided by middle aged commitments and expectations. If the book teaches us one thing, it's that life goes on even if it doesn't go on forever. Michael didn't die of the plague as most might have thought he would. The AIDS-cocktail saved his life and he's still living in his beloved San Francisco. He's sold his nursery and is now a successful freelance gardener. He has a new husband, Ben, who is 21 years younger. Ben, who Michael first became aware of on a web site for younger men looking for older guys, adores mature Daddies, and Michael has learned to accept the role. Their relationship is open, but they are very much in love and extremely contented. Michael realizes that he has two different families, the biological one he left behind in Florida many years before, and his logical one, as Anna Madrigal puts it, the one that formed at the legendary 28 Barbary Lane. His biological family has never really accepted who he is and his logical family has never failed to be there to take up the slack. Unlike the many stories told in the TALES novels, this is primarily Michaels story, one often filled with tragedy, but still optimistic in scope. Michael has learned to appreciate life's little gifts and his existence is a happy one. He knows where his loyalties lie, and that knowledge never waivers. MICHAEL TOLIVER LIVES may not be the sequel I hoped for, but it is still an extremely successful and entertaining novel, full of depth and great understanding. Michael has grown up and so has this wonderful world created by Maupin. I can't recommend this book highly enough.