Tales from the City by Armistead Maupin (37/81)

Category: Authors that are New to Me

I’d been meaning to read this book for years, and then on holiday in San Francisco, our apartment had a copy on its shelves. As it is the definitive San Francisco book, I had to read while I was staying in the city.

I loved the references to the city and I found it a compulsive read, but I didn’t ever fall in love with it or the characters. I was interested in the characters in the way that you might be interested in gossip about celebrities – I never really cared, but it filled up some time without having to think too hard. It struck me as rather a shallow book and the characters, despite being overtly quirky, never seemed real.

Moreover the naivety of the 1970s and the sexual free for all didn't sit comfortably with me, knowing that the scene it was portraying was later to be hit by AIDS. I found it hard to read it in the light way it was written with this hindsight.