TALES OF THE CITY

by Armistead Maupin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 23, 1978

If you missed last year's The Serial and worry about it, here's another long-running serialized newspaper soap peopled with the intertwined archetypes of the San Francisco ethos: Do anything, do it often, and make sure it's a clichÉ before making a firm commitment to it. This is satire at its second-best, the author having caught the nuances of stereotypical mod America, down to Vitabath, mescaline, phrases like ""cosmic plasticity,"" and outworn hippiedom. The characters--all too real in their unrelenting banality--are woven into a plot that centers around Anna Madrigal's apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane. Her tenants include Mary Ann Singleton, who has a brief affair with Beauchamp Days. His wife, DeDe (nÉe Halcyon), is made pregnant by a Japanese delivery boy and so goes to gay gynecologist Jon Fielding, who is sleeping with her husband Beauchamp and has had an affair with Michael Mouse Tolliver, who lives with his friend Mona, at Mrs. Madrigal's. Which is a neat package, when you consider that Mrs. Madrigal is having an affair with Edgar Halcyon, who is Beauchamp's father-in-law and Mary Ann's boss. Add to that a one-eared crisis center volunteer named Vincent and Mona's lesbian lover D'Orothea Williams--a black model who was white but took Black Like Me pills so she could get jobs. It's bad enough to have to live in a world full of joggers, poetry-spouting dope-smokers, disappointed matrons, and advertising executives. It virtually hurts to read about them; but, for faddish masochists--absolutely comic.

Pub Date: Aug. 23, 1978

ISBN: 0061358304

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION