The cover art for Armistead Maupin's new novel "Michael Tolliver Lives" has been released in advance of its release on 12 June. This new book revisits "Mouse," the beloved sweet spirit of Maupin's "Tales of the City" series. Eighteen years have passed since we last left Michael. He is now 55 years old, still living in his beloved San Francisco, and still best friends with Brian Hawkins.
A mini-review from Publishers Weekly:
Maupin denies that this is a seventh volume of his beloved "Tales of the City," but - happily - that's exactly what it is, with style and invention galore. When we left the residents of 28 Barbary Lane, it was 1989, and Michael "Mouse" Tolliver was coping with the supposed death sentence of HIV. Now, improved drug cocktails have given him a new life, while regular shots of testosterone and doses of Viagra allow him a rich and inventive sex life with a new boyfriend, Ben, "twenty-one years younger than I am - an entire adult younger, if you must insist on looking at it that way." Number 28 Barbary Lane itself is no more, but its former tenants are doing well, for the most part, in diaspora. Michael's best friend, ladies' man Brian Hawkins, is back, and unprepared for his grown daughter, Shawna, a pansexual it-girl journalist à la Michelle Tea, to leave for a New York career. Mrs. Madrigal, the transsexual landlady, is still radiant and mysterious at age 85. Maupin introduces a dazzling variety of real-life reference points, but the story belongs to Mouse, whose chartings of the transgressive, multigendered sex trends of San Francisco are every bit as lovable as Mouse's original wet jockey shorts contest in the very first Tales, back in 1978.I am re-reading (for a third time, mind you) the original six-book series as we approach the release date for "Michael Tolliver Lives." Needless to say...
I. Can't. Wait.
