Mona of the Manor

A Novel (Tales of the City, Book 10)

By: Armistead Maupin

Narrated by: Mara Wilson

Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Narrated by Mara Wilson

“Maupin is one of America’s finest storytellers.”—Neil Gaiman

Set in the early 1990s, the long-awaited tenth novel in Armistead Maupin’s beloved and enduring Tales of the City series follows the adventures of Mona Ramsey, now the widowed Lady of a glorious old manor in Britain’s golden Cotswolds, and her fabulous adopted son Wilfred, as they come to the aid of an American visitor with a troubling secret.

When Mona Ramsey married Lord Teddy Roughton to secure his visa—allowing him to remain in San Francisco to fulfill his wildest dreams—she never imagined she would, by age 48, be the sole owner of Easley House, Teddy’s grand, romantic country manor in the UK. She also didn't imagine that she’d need to open the manor’s doors to paying guests to afford the electric bill and repair the leaking roof. Yet somehow she and her young friend Wilfred—whom guests assume is serving as Easley’s charming-but-clumsy butler—and the loopy old gardener Mr. Hargis, are making it work.

This delicate equilibrium is upended when Americans Rhonda and Ernie Blaylock arrive for a weekend vacation at Easley, and Wilfred stumbles onto their terrible secret. Now, instead of being able to focus on the imminent arrival of her old friend Michael Tolliver and beloved parent Anna Madrigal, Mona will need to focus all of her considerable charm, willpower, and wiles—and the help of Wilfred and Mona’s girlfriend Poppy, the town’s postmistress and local calligraphy whiz—to set things right before the Midsummer ceremony when the whole town will descend on Easley’s historic grounds.

©2024 Armistead Maupin (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

Nice to “see”old friends again.

Cute story of our old friends. Nice to know they are still going strong.Looking forward to the next chapter.

THE GREAT ARMISTEAD DID IT AGAIN!

This was a wonderful story with an excellent reader. I hope there will be many more sequels with our friends from Barbary lane!

loved Monas life in UK

This was a fun way to get a load of Mona's life post Barbary Lane. I enjoyed it thoroughly

He just keeps getting better!

I love the early Tales, but he just becomes a better and better writer, as the years speed by, now beginning to blur with their rapid rush. Okay, getting older has not prevented me from remaining dreadful, but his skill continues to improve. Thank you so much for the gift of your fine work, sir!

Just ok

I think I’m finally done with Maupin. Love his characters and the storylines have mostly been interesting but I feel like he’s just mailing the last few in. It has been great and you might really enjoy this one. For me I would rather go back and re-read some of his earlier books.

A Sweet Family Love Story

Complex, Layered. A story about people growing emotionally into their true selves. The reader didn’t do accents very well and used the same sugary register through out which was annoying.

Comfortable read

I liked the characters- the setting. The conflicts were relatable. I read all the Barbary Lane books. Maupin creates a great world and lets you inhabit the characters.

Going through the motions

The length of this book is telling. Maupin’s heart clearly wasn’t in this one. Having killed off Mona and Anna previously, he has to go back in time to tell this story. This is not his forte. He does best work when he can use Michael as his alter ego in the current moment. This story is as two-dimensional as all memories. It is the first time I’ve been disappointed with a Tales of the City novel.

Good addition to TALES but PROBLELMATIC Narration!

Having read and/or listened to all of the books in Maupin's TALES OF THE CITY series I can say that this is probably his weakest. Nevertheless, it is a joy to revisit these characters, and I'm both glad and thankful that author Maupin has gifted us with another book. While not as deep or complex or insightful as many others in the series, it does have many Maupin touches which will bring a smile to the reader who is familiar with the other books.

However, as regards the narration, the news is not so positive. First, the good points: the narrator has a pleasant voice and is a good actor in the sense that she brings the proper emotional expression to each line. However, there are two BIG problems: firstly, her British accent is hit-and-miss at best, and I mean hit-and-miss within the same sentence. One word will have the full accent, then a later word in the same sentence with the same vowel will have none at all.

Bear in mind that the accent is critical because this book is SET in England and many of the characters require that accent. Therefore, this is a constant and recurring problem throughout.

Secondly, the narrator does not, in general, distinguish between voices. Most all of the voices sound the same in tonality. For example, there is a scene in which Mrs. Madrigal is riding in a taxi with Michael Tolliver to the manor house. There is NO difference between Mrs. M's voice and Michael's. Mrs. Madrigal does not sound older or aged or "wiser" in any way, and Michael's voice is NOT lower in register as a male's should be. It is just the narrator's natural voice for both characters and each is the same. The only way the listener can know WHO is speaking is via the text itself. That requires keen attention. And this is not the only scene in which this happens. I recall several.

A good actor will not only vary the voices in pitch and tone-- such as aged women being a bit more "graveley" as should have been the case with Mrs. Madrigal (even though she was probably only later middle aged here), as well as men being voiced in lower registers-- but a good actor will also vary the RHYTHM and CADENCE of each character (which is especially helpful in the case of Mrs. Madrigal, as we know from the narrators of previous books in the series).

This narrator was not horrible, and I still enjoyed the book. But these problems continued throughout and were constantly irritating. I almost wonder if this was a novice narrator (I haven't checked) as these seem elementary mistakes. At any rate, they should have been caught by the director or producer. And perhaps they were, and what we have here is the improved result after coaching. But if that's the case I would certainly not like to hear what it was like before coaching.

So-- did I enjoy this audiobook? Yes. Since I was willing to persevere and do my best to overlook the narration problems, and since I love the book series so much, yes, I did enjoy it overall. I tend to be forgiving, so I kept telling myself "don't let it throw you, just keep listening".

But I never thought I'd be giving a TALES OF THE CITY book only a 3 star rating!

British accents are atrocious

Mara Wilson’s British accents are so amateurish. I just couldn’t bear it and packed it in. I will have to finish it on Kindle. What a shame. How hard could it be to find an American actor who can do accents (or someone like Alan Cumming, a previous Maupin narrator) who can do American ones?