Mary Ann in Autumn: a Tales of the City Novel by Armistead Maupin Doubelday HK$208
What started as a newspaper column in the San Francisco Chronicle about the everyday travails of Mary Ann Singleton in 1976 led to the popular Tales of the City book series, of which this novel is the eighth instalment.
Centred from the first book on the then naive Mary Ann - a fresh-faced arrival in the Bay city - the stories delved into the edgy and heart-warming lives of a disparate group of friends (and sometimes enemies), their relationships and personal demons in a city where re-invention and 'finding oneself' was paramount.
At the time, the books captured a moment in history when an alternative or non-judgmental lifestyle was still largely misunderstood outside of such places as the Castro area of San Francisco. Maupin managed to create believable and loveable characters to which we could all relate, delving into their psyches and giving an insight into not just their lives but the complexities of the human condition.
This instalment brings the reader back to the scene some 20 years after Mary Ann left her adopted daughter, husband and loyal friends to follow her ambitious television dreams to New York.
Mary Ann, now 57 and struggling with two devastating revelations in her personal life, finds San Francisco a place where varied past experiences and incidences lurk on every street corner. Its bittersweet memories force her to look at how she plans to live and love (as one of Mary Ann's old friends says about their younger lives in the city, 'We know where the bodies are buried').