More than enough charm, wit and pathos to keep even a Maupin virgin enthralled
Independent
 

Michael Tolliver, the sweet-spirited Southerner in Armistead Maupin’s classic Tales of the City series, is arguably the most beloved gay character in fiction. Now, almost twenty years after ending his groundbreaking saga of San Francisco life, Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero, letting the 55-year-old gardener tell his story in his own voice.

Having survived the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers, Michael has learned to embrace the random pleasures of life, the tender alliances that sustain him in the hardest of times, Michael Tolliver Lives follows its protagonist as he finds love with a younger man, attends to his dying fundamentalist mother in Florida, and finally reaffirms his allegiance to a wise octogenarian who was once his landlady.

While Maupin insists that this book is not, strictly speaking, a continuation of Tales of the City, a reassuring number of familiar faces appear along the way. As usual, the author’s mordant wit and ear for pitch-perfect dialogue serve every aspect of the story-- from the bawdy to the bittersweet. Michael Tolliver Lives is a novel about the act of growing older joyfully and the everyday miracles that somehow make that possible.

A book of considerable charm
Daily Mail

Wonderfully engaging, warm and witty
The Scotsman

May well be the funniest series of novels currently in progress...Maupin's ear for dialogue is as acute as his feeling for characterisation, and the net result is as engaging a read as you are likely to encounter
The Times

The Tales of the City sequence has been one of the literary menus plaisirs of the past decade - Maupin with his elegance and charm has found a place among the classics
Observer

Maupin's warm, gossipy style makes Michael Tolliver Lives an undemanding pleasure
Saturday Guardian

Comedy in its most classical form...some of the sharpest and most speakable dialogue you are ever likely to read
Guardian

Armistead Maupin is in fine form in the delightful, tender and funny Michael Tolliver Lives. The beloved characters from the Tales of the City books are back, and it feels as if they've never been away
The Gloss Magazine

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