Michael Tolliver Lives: A Novel
by Armistead Maupin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Armistead MaupinEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-06-12
ISBN: 0060761350
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: HarperCollins
Book Reviews of Michael Tolliver Lives: A Novel
Book Review: "You don't have to keep up, dear. You just have to keep open."
Summary: 4 Stars
In Michael Tolliver Lives, Armistead Maupin once again exhibits his love for the beloved characters made so famous in his highly successful Tales of the City series. The good news is that you don't have to have read any of the previous novels to appreciate this melancholic and deeply reflective ode to the life and loves of the fifty-five-year old HIV positive Michael Tolliver.
Now middle aged, Michael is still living in his beloved "gayberry," of San Fransico, a city that has provided such a colourful backdrop to much of his life. Indeed, Michael has been enjoying a comfortable urban life, one he once believed was almost unachievable. One of the few men of his generation who cheated death, Michael can barely turn around without gazing into the strangely familiar features of someone long believed dead walking the lines at the local supermarket or on the streets of the Castro district.
Lately, Michael has even had a chance at love, an opportunity for a relationship with Ben, a much younger man, thanks to the connection of his friends, especially his kindly surrogate mother, Anna Madrigal. Employed by a South of Market furniture designer, Ben appears in Michael's life almost out of the blue, from an Internet web site for men in their twenties and thirties who are specifically looking for partners over the age of forty-five.
Like somone from another century, "a stalwart captured on daguerreaotype," Ben immediately captures Michael with his casual masculinity and his tenderness of heart. They even find time to get marriaged when the Mayor of San Fransicso allows such nuptuals to take place at City Hall. Together they waited in the long line with the rest of those middle-aged people some of them with kids in tow, "waiting to affirm what they'd already known for years."
Meeting Ben, however, is not the only sudden shift that occurs in Michael's life. When Irwin, his brother calls from Orlando, informing him their mother is dying of emphasemia, Michael dutyfully returns to the fold, taking Ben with him. Once a virtual stranger in the scheme of things, over the years a subtle shift has occurred Michael's relationship with his mother.
Although a god-fearing woman, and a Christian fundamentalist, whom Irwin once hauled to the polls - oxygen tank and all - so she could vote for Bush one more time, his mother has somewhat sofened on her stance regarding Michael's homosexuality. Intead, it is Lenore, Irwin's wife who is left to hold the biblical fort, tending to their Moma ever since Papa died, while also teaching Children's bible study and doing her Jesus puppet ministry with their seven-year-old grandson who is probably going to turn out to be a "nancy boy" anyway.
This is a time for forgiveness and also for goodbyes as Michael becomes the new confidante for his Mother, as she seeks to act our her final wishes. Meanwhile, Irwin hides behind the growing problems of his own marriage as he realizes he's somewhat resigned to spending the rest of his days with his "McMansion and his Personal Savior."
When he's not detailing Michael's escapes in Orlando, the author perfectly captures in this world of the San Fransisco gay community, and the various people that have orbited Michael Tolliver's world over the past thirty years. Some of the characters from the previous novels make a welcome appearance, including Mary Ann, who now lives a life of priviledge from her house in Darien Connecticut and Michael's best friend Brian "twenty pounds heavier with his sandpaper beard."
Brian's daughter Shawna is now a fully grown woman, sexually free and liberated, content to "diddle herself in a plywood cubicle," and Jake Greenleaf, Michael's sometime assistant, a short stocky bear of thirty or thereabouts with a trim little beard and soulful gray eyes, is a willing friend who finds a sort of spiritual grandmother in Anna, someone who understands him without effort or condescension.
Maupin beautifully infuses Michael's mid-life experiences with a type of gentle humor a fragile irony as he is forced to forced to come to terms with middle-aged anxiety, the demands of his extended family, and his need to be loved, " if the virus doesn't claim me, then old age will start playing dirty soon enough." Obviously for Michael, life hasn't been perfect, but it has been his life, tailored to his dreams, and safely lived beyond the reach of God's terrible sword. Mike Leonard August 07.
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