Michael Tolliver Lives!

[pauliepoos]

There's a very strange Canadian film called Love And Human Remains that he was in - there's a scene where he takes a crap haired teenage boy over a pool table if I remember rightly.

There's a road in Cardiff called Beauchamp Street and everytime I walked past it I would think of him.

[David Hunter]

I finished this a few nights ago and also had tears running down my face. It's hard to comment though without spoiling it for those who haven't read it. I suppose you'd just avoid the thread.

Something was inevitable as it was hinted at throughout the book and I very much didn't want it to happen. Then when it didn't I was, well, I don't want to say disappointed, but felt odd as I'd been prepared for it to happen. Does that make sense to those who've finished it?

[puppydogstail]

All that talk about shagging a fat old man left me heaving.

[charliepops]

When I finished it I was crying buckets and it made me want re-re-re-re-reread the books from the beginning again. However, I know just what you mean David about feeling slightly disappointed. The ending is foreshadowed almost from chapter two so when it doesn't happen it was almost a bit of a let down, as it was building towards an emotional climax that never came.

However, it did give me hope that Maupin would stay true to his words that this isn't the end of the Tales books, instead it's the beginning of anew series.

[David Hunter]

It got a terrible review in the Metro today which actually, much as I enjoyed the book and delighted to have them all back, part of me agreed with.

As our eponymous hero strolls down the road at the opening of Michael Tolliver Lives, a stranger accosts him with the line: 'Hey, you're supposed to be dead.' Sad to say but by the end of this painfully slight story you'll wish Tales Of The City protagonist Tolliver had been laid to rest when the much-loved novel cycle reached its natural end nearly 20 years ago.

The return to Armistead Maupin's freewheeling San Francisco world is a depressing affair. Not because of its Aids-ravaged cast, encroaching old age and more romantic/sexual dilemmas. But because it's so damn smug. And somehow, it doesn't seem so magical any more.

Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, Tales Of The City's omniscient third-person narrator, is given a first person voice here – and it doesn't suit him. Mainly because he's turned into a slightly whiny, arthritic 55-year-old, ticking over on a cocktail of retrovirals.

Worse still, from a narrative perspective, he's blissfully married to too-good-to-be-true, thirtysomething Ben, who is boringly supportive as Mouse waffles on about the good ol' days with transsexual landlady Anna Madrigal in Barbary Lane – and then learns his imperious Southern mother is dying.

Having long ago swapped his homophobic, God-squad 'biologicals' in Orlando for his anything-goes, polysexual, 'logical' family in San Fran, the return is hard. But Ben is there, to smirk and chuckle along with him – and then there's always a black hairdresser up for a (graphically described) threeway to lessen the pain.

The mawkishness of Maupin's prose used to be leavened by the amusing, coincidence-packed plots that, at the time, were groundbreaking literary depictions of gay life.

Now, the paucity of plotlines for Mouse and Maupin's other resurrected characters means there's little to stop you drowning in his sugary sentiments.

[Adrian]

Most of the reviews have said similar. I think a lot of the attraction of the books is their familiarity, their sense of inclusion, having read from the beginning. Reading them as stand-alone books doesn't really give them a just review.

(Sorry, I think that makes no sense.)

I wanted the first series of the TV show on DVD last week. My God, it was so so so slow. It didn't capture the books well at all.

A

[David Hunter]

The part I agree with was that I didn't like the first person. It reminded me too much of 'Night Listener' and made it far more Armistead rather than Mouse talking.

I actually like the TV series and think it captures things quite well. As for the speed of it, it's a bit like hearing a disco song from the 70s and thinking how slow it sounds nowadays. The 3rd installment, "Further Tales" is more of a TV movie and feels a little short by comparison.

For sheer horror value you should have seen the only ever production of 'Babycakes' performed some years ago by an all Glaswegian cast!

Whatever happened to the musical version of 'Tales' they were talking about a couple of years ago?

[David Hunter]

Armistead was in Glasgow Clone Zone today doing a signing. I didn't know about it till I passed and it was happening right at that moment. Had I had my copy on me I'd have nipped in but didn't see much point of just going in to see how he much he's aged since he signed my 'Maybe The Moon' back in the day.

He's probably doing a tour of Clone Zones if you keep your eyes peeled.