Rueful but never regretful, warmhearted and witty: a treat for Maupin’s many fans.
The central figure in Tales of the City returns two decades later and brings us up to date on most of the popular series’ other characters as well.
Michael is now 55 and HIV-positive, but his meds keep him healthy, along with shots of testosterone administered by 33-year-old live-in boyfriend Ben, who thinks older men are hot. They even got married at City Hall, though of course Michael’s born-again mother, brother and sister-in-law down in Florida flinch every time he refers to Ben as his husband. Fortunately, he’s still got the emotional support of former landlady Anna Madrigal, now 85 and in fragile health, and straight pal Brian Hawkins, sole owner of the nursery they founded together. (Back when Michael thought he was going to die, he decided he’d rather plant gardens.) Brian’s ex Mary Ann, a fellow alum of 28 Barbary Lane, long ago decamped for Connecticut and a stockbroker husband, but their daughter Shawna carries on the San Francisco bohemian tradition as a cheerfully bisexual blogger who chronicles “her escapades in the pansexual wonderland.” So things are good and not so very different from the old days on Barbary Lane as Maupin brings his characters into middle age with his customary blend of ready humor, frank sex scenes (that always seem kind of sweet) and unrepentant antagonism toward the red-state Americans who hate Michael and his kind. Those folks include Michael’s biological family. Michael’s mother, meanwhile, is dying of emphysema, and Michael, who’s faced his own mortality, as well as that of lovers and friends, must now grapple with an impending death that connects him to people with whom he otherwise has nothing in common. Michael’s detested father, though dead for many years, provides a startling final plot twist that enables Michael to make tentative peace with brother Irwin, and Anna’s heart attack prompts Michael to declare allegiance to his true family. Thirty years later, he’s still proud of the life he’s made and the city that made it possible.
Rueful but never regretful, warmhearted and witty: a treat for Maupin’s many fans.Pub Date: June 12, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-076135-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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