Tales of the City Audiobook By Armistead Maupin cover art

Tales of the City

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Tales of the City

By: Armistead Maupin
Narrated by: Armistead Maupin
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A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick

The first novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s bestselling San Francisco saga, and inspiration for the Netflix original series, Tales of the City

“A consummate entertainer who has made a generation laugh. . . . It is Maupin’s Dickensian gift to be able to render love convincingly.”— Edmund White, Times Literary Supplement

For over four decades Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture—from a groundbreaking newspaper serial to a classic novel, to a television event that entranced millions around the world. The first of ten novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed forever the way we live.

 Fiction Friendship Genre Fiction Humorous Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Comedy San Francisco
Interesting Characters • Intersecting Lives • Quirky Stories • Timeless Soap Opera • Memorable Moments

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I lived in San Francisco at the end of the time when this novel was serialized in The Chronicle newspaper. I remember reading it with some puzzlement at first, and later with a sense of enjoyment. I had an apartment that looked into Trader Vic's parking lot, and I would spend Friday evenings sitting on the fire escape watching the comings and goings: Tales of the City reminds me of those moments. However, absent that social scene, that society, that oddly innocent moment, I'm not sure the stories really stand up well today. At times it seems almost elegiac, which was not the original intent. Something unfortunate seems to have happened to the dreams, the beliefs, the energy we had back then, which is not the novel's fault, yet it somehow affects how one thinks of it today. The narration is all right, not affected by overdone "voices", but it isn't wonderful either.

I guess that time is gone, now

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Love the portrayal of the times, the great characters, and the serendipity. Maupin has an eye for contemporary society and its quirks.

Captures an Era

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What I love most about this story is all the real reference to the City I love the most. I grew up in the Bay Area and was the first in 6 generations to move out of the state. The characters are interesting and the references bring me back home.
What I didn't like was the quick movement from one plot to the next. Not sure if this is because it was originally done as a newspaper story or if it is the way it was edited for Audible. I find that I am often going back just to make sure I that I did not miss something by not paying attention.

I am still enjoying the story.

Brings me back to the City

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Even after all these years and multiple hearings I still love it. It’s in my favorites.

The Best

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Such an amazing collection of stories of the characters and scenes that will make anyone from the Bay area yearn for a visit back - one of the only books I've read to tackle the Aids epidemic with taste and humor too

A collection of forever favorites

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