Book Advisor: The Days of Anna Madrigal
Book Advisor: The Days of Anna Madrigal: Armistead Maupin
The Days of Ann Madrigal
Armistead Maupin
Random House
It’s never easy to say goodbye to old friends, particularly if you’ve known and loved them all your life. That’s the case for millions of fans worldwide as Armistead Maupin closes the door on his truly iconic, best-selling series Tales of the City with his ninth and final instalment, The Days of Anna Madrigal. We first met the transgender former landlady of San Francisco’s fictional 28 Barbary Lane boarding house back in 1976, when life was a wild party for Mary-Anne, Mouse, Brian and co, and we’ve watched them grow up through tragedies including cancer and the AIDS crisis. When Maupin revisited these well-loved characters in 2007 with Michael Tolliver Lives, it was an unexpected yet triumphant return. Now, only two books later, we’re forced to say adieu all over again as Anna returns to the scene of her childhood (as young Andy), while the rest of the cast head to the Nevada Desert and the Burning Man festival to find themselves and possibly get pregnant.
The New Daily says: Maupin is a master storyteller and has had almost forty years to make his readers fall madly in love with Mrs Madrigal and her rag tag gang of former tenants, now all grown up and having flown the coop. There’s a genuine joy to her odd couple relationship with young Jake, her younger female-to-male transgender friend with whom she now shares a small apartment. Jake desperately wants to take the now 92-year-old matriarch to Burning Man man with him, but she has other plans, and one last secret left up her sleeve. Heading back he to the site of the now long-gone Blue Moon brothel, where she once grew up as Andy in a most unusual childhood, first falling for the idea of love, if not sex, with another young man, it’s an achingly tender portrayal of love, loss and identity that’s perfectly mirrored by the alternative road trip taken by Michael (Mouse) his partner Ben, Brian and his daughter Shawna. Saying goodbye has never been harder, and we doubt you’ll have a dry eye when the last page turns. Say it isn’t over, Armistead?
Readings says: “The Days of Anna Madrigal is a joy, and those of us who have followed the lives of this group of San Franciscans for so many years will be genuinely touched… It’s said that for many readers, Tales of the City marked the first time gay characters were portrayed as normal people. That is definitely the case personally, and picking up the first book in the series at the age of 20 was revelatory.”
The Guardian says: “The Days of Anna Madrigal is by necessity a somewhat melancholy book, as Anna charts the “small surrenders” of old age, what she gracefully chooses to regard as “simplification” and “leaving like a lady”. Like her creator, she understands the virtue of letting go when the time comes, and one more time the two of them show the rest of us how it’s done.”
The Newtown Review of Books says: “I caught up with old family; I laughed, I cried… life is tough but we all survive. Our friends are doing all right and their story makes me feel better.”
Caroline Baum for Booktopia says: “Few authors know their characters as well as Maupin, who writes with tender wry affection for this motley community and their very Californian foibles. If you have to say goodbye to characters you love, this is the way to do it.”
