NAMED AS ONE OF THE BBC'S 100 MOST INSPIRING NOVELS
Now a Netflix series starring Ellen Page and Laura Linney . . .
'It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.' Oscar Wilde
Mary Ann is twenty-five and arrives in San Francisco for an eight-day holiday.
But then her Mood Ring turns blue.
So obviously she decides to stay. It is the 1970s after all.
Fresh out of Cleveland, naive Mary Ann tumbles headlong into a brave new world of pot-growing landladies, cut throat debutantes, spaced-out neighbours and outrageous parties. Finding a job as a secretary at an ad agency, Mary Ann wants to start her own life, away from her parents and with the flower-power freedom to make her own friends and her own decisions.
The saga that ensues introduces vignettes that are manic, romantic, tawdry and touching - unmistakably the handiwork of Armistead Maupin.
Armistead Maupin was born in Washington, D.C. in 1944 but was brought up in Raleigh, North Carolina. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he served as a naval officer in Vietnam before moving to California in 1971 as a reporter for the Associated Press. In 1976 he launched his daily newspaper serial, Tales of the City, in the San Francisco Chronicle. The first fiction to appear in an American daily for decades, Tales grew into an international sensation when compiled and rewritten as novels. Maupin's six-volume Tales of the City sequence - Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, and Sure of You - are now multi-million bestsellers published in eleven languages. The first three of these novels were adapted into widely acclaimed television mini-series. Maupin's 1992 novel, Maybe the Moon, chronicling the adventures of the world's shortest woman, was a number one bestseller. His novel The Night Listener was made into a feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette in 2006.
Armistead Maupin lives in San Francisco, California. For more information about Armistead Maupin and his work, please visit his official author website at: www.armisteadmaupin.com
Title: Tales Of The City
Author: Armistead Maupin
ISBN: 9780552998765
Binding:
Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
Publication Date: 1984-05-25
Number of Pages: 272
Weight: 0.1815 kg
A consummate entertainer... It is Maupin's Dickensian gift to be able to render love convincingly -- Edmund White * The Times Literary Supplement *
Maupin is a richly gifted comic author * Observer *
San Francisco is fortunate in having a chronicler as witty and likeable as Armistead Maupin * Independent *
Like those of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Armistead Maupin's novels have all appeared originally as serials... it is the strength of this approach, with its fantastic adventures and astonishingly contrived coincidences, that makes these novels charming and compelling * Literary Review *
