Book description
NAMED AS ONE OF THE BBC'S 100 MOST INSPIRING NOVELS
Now a Netflix series starring Elliot 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…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Tales of the City as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
There were only three Tales of the City books when I picked up my first copy. There are now nine of them, spanning 40 years.
First written as a newspaper serial, the collected Tales explore the lives and loves of a diverse group of folks living in the same boarding house at 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco. Among them is landlord Anna Madrigal, an early trans icon, and gay everyman Michael ‘Mouse’ Tolliver, a hopeless romantic looking for love in the Castro.
The book is an easy read with short chapters, lots of dialogue, and zany plot twists. What…
From Christopher's list on The best books that uplift and celebrate queer kinship and chosen family.
What can be said about the Tales of the City books that hasn’t already been said? My love for the books has everything to do with Maupin himself—when he started the series as a correspondent at The Pacific Sun, he was newly out, a framed photograph of him shaking hands with Nixon in The White House hanging on his apartment wall. To me, the books were Maupin’s way of writing himself as a fallible gay man out into the complexities of the world, learning to be a more empathetic person one chapter at a time. Not every story finds its…
From Jeremy's list on The best books for building community.
If you love Tales of the City...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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