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Armistead Maupin

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Tales of the City: A Novel Paperback – May 29, 2007

by Armistead Maupin (Author)

4.3 2,671 ratings

Book 1 of 10: Tales of the City

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The first novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga, and inspiration for the Netflix original series once again starring Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis.

Inspiration for the Netflix Limited Series, Tales of the City

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick

For almost four decades Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture—from a groundbreaking newspaper serial to a classic novel, to a television event that entranced millions around the world. The first of nine novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed forever the way we live.

Book 1 of 10

Tales of the City
Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publication date

May 29, 2007
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.9 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0061358304
ISBN-13

978-0061358302
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

For almost four decades Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture—from a groundbreaking newspaper serial to a classic novel, to a television event that entranced millions around the world. The first of nine novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that forever changed the way we live.

About the Author

Armistead Maupin is the author of the nine-volume Tales of the City series, which includes Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn, and now The Days of Anna Madrigal. Maupin's other novels include Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener. Maupin was the 2012 recipient of the Lambda Literary Foundation's Pioneer Award. He lives in San Francisco with his husband, the photographer Christopher Turner.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (May 29, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0061358304
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061358302
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.23 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.9 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #76,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #48 in Humorous American Literature
- #736 in Humorous Fiction
- #5,493 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 2,671 ratings

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Armistead Maupin

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Armistead Maupin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1944 but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he served as a naval officer in the Mediterranean and with the River Patrol Force in Vietnam. Maupin worked briefly as a reporter for a newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, before being assigned to the San Francisco bureau of the Associated Press in 1971. The climate of freedom and tolerance he found in his adopted city inspired him to come out publicly as homosexual in 1974. Two years later, he launched his “Tales of the City” serial in the San Francisco Chronicle, the first fiction to appear in an American daily for decades.

Maupin is the author of nine novels, including the six-volume Tales of the City series, Maybe the Moon, The Night Listener and, most recently, Michael Tolliver Lives. Three miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney were made from the first three novels in the Tales series. The Night Listener became a feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette.

He lives in Santa Fe with his husband, the photographer Christopher Turner.

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4.3 out of 5

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Kindle Customer Richard E. Moore

Maybe you don't know him as well as you thought you did!

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2019

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Hampstead Maupin was politically incorrect before anyone had ever heard the term-and unapologetically so. The author writes about the LGBTQ culture in the early 1970's San Francisco when gay was the term that included a transsexual landlady, homosexual male tenant who aspired to be a kept woman, a Fundamentalist set of parents who couldn't see the forest for the trees when they came from Florida to visit their son, a female fashion model who identified as black so that she would be more marketable even though both biological parents were Lily white, a lesbian tenant who wanted to revive her relationship with the black model, a homosexual male OBGYN WHO had a sexual encounter with a virile captain of industry whose wife had just come to see the doctor about getting an abortion, and tying everything together is an innocent young Secretary from Cleveland who quickly discovered that she and her little dog Toto were no longer in Kansas. If you are able to set aside your preconceived prejudices for a short while, you are in for the ride of your life. There are five more books in Maupin's Tales of the City series, but I might just stop where I finished at the end of the first book because the other five could not possibly be as much fun.

25 people found this helpful

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DB

Interesting book

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2023

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Problems with this book are the small font size and the faint ink. Both make is stressful for my eyes.

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2023

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If you’re familiar with the San Francisco of the 1970’s Maupin’s novel is a sweet reconnection with the city and the kind of people you could encounter on any given day. Just a sweet, funny, poignant stroll.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Iconic view of the social and sexual mores of San Francisco in the 1970s

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2016

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This is a classic examination of the fluid scene of San Francisco in the late 1970s -- with gay, straight and transsexual men and women organizing their lives around each other, many secrets being progressively revealed (and some kept for the sequels), improbable ways in which some characters meet other characters we had already been introduced to in a different context, and a sarcastic take on the life of the socialites who cling to their privileges and a disappearing society.
The book is mostly told through fast-paced dialog between the characters, sometimes a little hard to follow (on the 10th repartee, you may not quite follow who is saying what) and is sometimes too clever -- no one is quite _that_ smart all the time. It sounds like this was written with a stage version in mind, and it did become a TV miniseries. The style is somewhat reminiscent of Noel Coward. It makes for a lot of fun.

5 people found this helpful

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Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Light and fluffy

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2018

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I remember when this was running in the San Francisco _Chronicle_ as a serial. (Not to be confused with _The Serial_, which ran in the _Chron_ a year or so earlier and was about Marin County...) I chose not to read it then, though we _had_ a subscription to the _Comical_; I read a few columns and didn't get into it.

So what is it?

_Tales_ chronicles (see what I did there?) the lives, loves, lusts, heartbreaks, and minor irritations of a dozen or so people living in and around San Francisco in the mid-to-late 1970s.

Most of the characters center around 28 Barbary Lane, a small apartment house run by one Anna Madrigal. Mrs. (she insists on it though, she says, she's never been married) Madrigal is a motherly, free-spirited woman who grows weed in the back yard and names all the plants. (We eventually learn, or _may_ learn, that she has Secrets and that her name is an anagram (of what?).)

What it is, then, is, well, a soap opera. The serialized format turns into chapters of (usually) three or four pages, each of which extends the stories of (typically) one or two of the major characters. Like a soap opera - but also like Dickens, for Heaven's sake - the plot runs heavily on coincidence. One character's gynecologist turns out to be another's love interest, that sort of thing.

Give Maupin credit for this: his characters run a fairly wide spectrum of social "levels," from the unemployed to the millionaire social-register class, and, somehow, they all interact plausibly if not quite believably. Each is motivated by their own personal and social imperatives, and we learn enough of their motivations to empathize with them - with the exception of Mrs. Madrigal , who remains a delicious mystery.

The writing is light and fluffy and humorous without ever descending into satire or silliness, either of which would rob the characters of their identities.

It's enjoyable enough that I read it in two days, but I don't feel particularly compelled to read the (8) sequels.

9 people found this helpful

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A glimpse at a time and a place ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2007

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Every now and then an author is able to capture the "magic" - flavor may be a more accurate description - of a time and place. Armistead Maupin has done that in _Tales of the City_.

Set in San Francisco in the mid-1970's, the lives of his characters cross each other and intertwine. Originally written as a serial in the San Francisco _Chronicle_, it is reminiscent of Dickens: short vignettes with sharply drawn characters, plenty of drama and tension (sexual and otherwise) that frequently leave the reader with a cliff-hanger at the end of the chapter leaving you hungering for more.

The writing is witty (every few pages I was laughing out loud - much to the chagrin of those sitting around me at the coffee shop where I was reading most of the book), a bit irreverant (sexuality, gender, race and class are all targets of Maupin's pen), and utterly entertaining. I thorougly enjoyed the stories, and I highly recommend it.

6 people found this helpful

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Simon Lofts

Still in my book case

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2011

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I don't know about you, but if you're reading this note then chances are that you're a bookaholic.
I read Tales of the City many years ago and have kept my copy ever since, occasionally picking it up to search out and remind myself of one vignette or another.
Over the years I have bought and read more books than I care to imagine. And annually I have a clear out and take piles down to the nearest charity shop. Only the best survive the annual cull.
This is one of them and if you haven't read it then there's no time like the present to put things right. A beautifully paced and charming set of stories within a story.

4 people found this helpful

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Suzanne Gibb

Book

Reviewed in Canada on September 6, 2021

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Excellent

Drew Payne

It is 1976 and Mary Ann Singleton changes her visit to San Francisco into a permanent move.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2023

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It is 1976 and Mary Ann Singleton changes her visit to San Francisco into a permanent move. Naïve from her sheltered live in Cleveland, she wants a new life in The City. She finds an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, and gets drawn into the found family her landlady, Mrs Madrigal, has created from the other tenants there. There is bohemian Mona Ramsey, gay Michael "Mouse" Tolliver and womanising Brian Hawkins. Though we are introduced into this by Mary Ann, this isn’t her story alone. Soon we are following the different lives of the residents of 28 Barbary Lane.

Armistead Maupin’s stroke of genius was to set this story within a household of apartments and the tenants who live there, with their unconventional mother-figure in Mrs Madrigal. Through their lives he could write about the different aspects of San Francisco life in the 1970s. The other genius is that not just Maupin populated this novel with a large number of LGBT characters but that he treated them the same as all the other characters. They don’t come to sordid ends or end in pathetic suicides, they just have as messy and complicated lives as the straight characters.

This novel was originally written as a newspaper serial and its style still reflects that, short and episodic scenes that rely on dialog, rather than description, to build character and atmosphere. This creates a fast-paced read, peppered frequently with jokes, but from time-to-time I did want a few passages of description just to slow down the pace and give me a moment to breath.

This isn’t a historical novel, it was written in the 1970s and gloriously reflects the times. This isn’t a story about bright colours and brighter pop music. It explores the social change and different lifestyles that the 1960s had hinted at. It reminds us how important the 1970s were, especially if you are LGBT. Unfortunately, it does portray some of the 1970’s sexual politics that we now find questionable, it was a different time.

Maupin wasn’t the first author to write a multi-character, multi-plot novel, but what he did was fill his novel with characters that had previously not been given a central role, and to portray them in an honest, open and non-sensational way. For so many LGBT people, of a certain age, this was a revolutionary novel. And today, it is still a novel that can hold a reader’s attention for a fascinating journey, with a lot of good jokes along the way.

2 people found this helpful

Hauke-Heeren Huelsebus

Perfekt!

Reviewed in Germany on July 6, 2023

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Perfekt!

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Effi Evans

Bella copertina, soddisfatti

Reviewed in Italy on March 15, 2021

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Il prodotto è arrivato nei tempo prestabiliti. Comprato per un regalo, speriamo piaccia al festeggiato.

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Phil

Sublime

Reviewed in France on July 30, 2010

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Ecrit à la manière d'une série télé, cette chronique réunit des personnages tous aussi étonnant les uns que les autres. Homosexualité, drogue, amour, amitié, famille ... tout y passe et avec un style fluide et dynamique, ça se lit tout seul. Une petit touche américaine avec la vie à San Francisco dans les années 70-80 m'incite à le recommander à ceux qui connaissent cette ville.
La série compte 6 tomes, personnellement j'ai une préférence marquée pour les trois premiers qui constituent un cycle.
Je recommande vivement cet ouvrage en anglais qui apporte toute la subtilité de la "VO" à cette série à la fois drôle et touchante.

Le niveau de langue est abordable mais comporte beaucoup d'argot.

6 people found this helpful

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