Chroniques de San Francisco
Today I finished the tome 1 of Tales of the City – 1978 (Chroniques de San Fancisco, in French) by Armistead Maupin. And I began the tome 2 : More Tales of the City – 1980.
The series opens with the arrival of Mary Ann Singleton, a naive young woman from Cleveland, Ohio. She finds an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, the domain of the eccentric marijuana-growing landlady Anna Madrigal. Mary Ann becomes friends with the other tenants of the building: the hippyish bisexual Mona Ramsey (who, though a central character, is not in all of the books); straight lothario Brian Hawkins (later Mary Ann’s husband); the sinister and cagey roof tenant Norman Neal Williams; and Michael Tolliver, a sweet and personable gay man known to friends as Mouse (as in Mickey Mouse), who becomes central to the series. Beyond the house, lovers and friends guide Mary Ann through her San Franciscan adventures. Mona’s ex-lover D’orothea Wilson, returns from a modelling assignment in New York, while Michael’s lover and DeDe’s gynecologist Jon Fielding graduates into the social circle. Edgar Halcyon, Mary Ann’s and Mona’s boss, Edgar’s socialite daughter DeDe Halcyon-Day, and her scheming bisexual husband Beauchamp Day all provide a glimpse into a more affluent Californian class, while Mrs. Madrigal’s mother and owner of the Blue Moon Lodge brothel, Mother Mucca, brings mystery and comic relief. In the last two books, Thack Sweeney becomes Michael’s lover. Real life people such as Jim Jones and a thinly veiled Elizabeth Taylor make appearances in the story lines.
Sometimes the fool who rushes in gets the job done.