Michael Tolliver Lives - Couverture souple

Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, the sweet-spirited Southerner in Armistead Maupin's classic Tales of the City series, is back. Now a fifty-five-year-old gardener, he brings the groundbreaking saga of San Francisco life up to date.

Having survived the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers, Michael Tolliver has learned to embrace the random pleasures of life, the tender alliances that sustain him in the hardest of times. While he has found love with a younger man, he must attend to the harsher realities around him: his dying fundamentalist mother in Florida, and those whose lives have not unfolded so happily. And in so doing, he finally reaffirms his allegiance to a wise octogenarian who was once his landlady.

With mordant wit and an ear for pitch-perfect dialogue from the bawdy to the bittersweet, Michael Tolliver Lives reveals the art of growing older joyfully and the everyday miracles that somehow make that possible.

'Maupin remains a great storyteller, a magnificently unrepentant liberal, and a wise, witty observer of the differences which make us human'
Sunday Telegraph

'More than enough charm, wit and pathos to keep even a Maupin virgin enthralled...The echoes of the previous novels will send them scurrying back to discover what they've been missing'
Independent

'Anyone who enjoyed [Maupin's] earlier books will welcome this opportunity for a return trip to its setting...Has the warmth of a reunion long overdue'
New York Times

Michael Tolliver, the sweet-spirited Southerner in Armistead Maupin's classic Tales of the City series, is arguably one of the most widely loved characters in contem-porary fiction. Now, almost twenty years after ending his ground-breaking saga of San Francisco life, Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero, letting the fifty-five-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.

Though this is a stand-alone novel—accessible to fans of Tales of the City and new readers alike—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.