Sure of You

It's with a little bit of sadness that I say goodbye to Armistead Maupin's "Tales in the City" series. I just completed the sixth and final book in the saga of Barbary Lane. From Goodreads:

"A fiercely ambitious TV talk show host finds she must choose between national stardom in New York and a husband and child in San Francisco. Caught in the middle is their longtime friend, a gay man whose own future is even more uncertain. Wistful and compassionate, yet subversively funny, Sure of You could only come from Armistead Maupin."

"Sure of You" ended much like "Tales of the City" began, with a new adventure and a new city for Cleveland native Mary Ann Singleton. It's too bad that this installment in the series was the only one not to be serialized in the San Francisco Examiner. It was a decent conclusion to some wonderful characters and storylines. Though everything wasn't necessarily tied up neatly, but then again, when in life is anything ever so.

It's a bittersweet ending for me. While I'm eager to move on to other reading projects I'll miss the adventures of Michael, Brian, Mary Ann, Anna, Mona, De De, and D'or. On the bright side Maupin wrote futher entries about his characters decades later in the novel "Michael Tolliver Lives" and the recently released "Mary Ann in Autumn". I'm sure they'll make their way to my reading list sometime next year. As I've said before, if you're unfamiliar with the "Tales of the City" series you really should give the novels a read. Recommended.