Michael Tolliver Lives

by Armistead Maupin

It’s been nearly twenty years since the last installment in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series, about the intertwined lives of Michael “Mouse” Tolliver and his friends and lovers in San Francisco.  Tales begins with the arrival of Mouse, a fresh-faced young gay man from Orlando, at the apartment building run by the colorful and eccentric Anna Madrigal in the mid-1970s.  In the ensuing six books Maupin chronicles Mouse’s life through the decades that follow, incorporating current events such as the Jim Jones massacre and the rise of AIDS. Although part of the Tales series, Maupin’s latest book is a standalone novel, with enough background given for each character that new readers won’t feel lost.

Lives takes place in the present day, and like the previous books shows how the wider culture that we live in affects our own lives, and how the political really is personal.  Michael, HIV-positive and not expected to survive long at the end of the previous novel Sure of You, is now 55 and still alive thanks to new antiretroviral drugs and now facing the reality of growing old despite the virus.  He’s found love again, this time with a man fully 25 years his junior, and was even married at San Francisco City Hall.  Through Michael we learn the fate of all the characters in the previous Tales books, and learn that life does go on for all of us.

Michael’s father never appears in this novel – he has passed away from prostate cancer – yet his influence still pervades Michael’s life.  It overshadows Michael’s relationship with his dying mother and his straight Christian brother, and pervades everything from Michael’s feelings towards his sissy nephew to his marriage to a much younger man.  Though not apparent on the surface, part of the story of Lives is about how a father’s influence can last our whole lives – for good or ill – and what it takes for us to step out from under it.  Lives also tells the story of Michael’s old friend Brian, now a single father and still an aging hippie who’s raised a bleeding-edge postmodern daughter now taking her first steps to independence.  This is not only a book about growing older, but also a meditation on the roles that fathers play in our lives and how critical they are in shaping who we become.

(Please be aware that this book does contain scenes of sexuality that, while not excessively graphic, may not be appropriate for all readers)

Read Other Reviews:

• Blogcritics Magazine
• book-ridden
• PopMatters
• NY Times Sunday Book Review

Product Details:

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (May 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060761369
• ISBN-13: 978-0060761363

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