I'm very, very excited.
The reason? Tonight I am toddling off to St George's Hall in Liverpool for an audience with American author Armistead Maupin (below).
If you have never heard of the man, he is repsonsible for the Tales of the City series. They began as a serial in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976 and grew to a series of six books which detailed the lives of a (mostly) close-knit bunch of SF tenants and their eccentric landlady between then and the end of the 1980s.
The serialised nature of the stories, plus the use of incredible coincidence to drive the plots, brought much comparison between Maupin and Dickens. He took this likening as a compliment (and rightly so) and his talk tonight is in the same venue Dickens gave readings more than a century ago.
It is almost 20 years since he touched the 'Tales' characters, but yesterday I finished reading Maupin's latest book, Michael Tolliver Lives. It is an amazing-coincidence-free (ish) story of how one of the central 'Tales' protagonists is surviving with HIV in his mid 50s, more than 20 years after his diagnosis. The old gang all come and go throughout its 270+ pages and at times it was incredibly moving - but I'd suggest taking in the original series first, to get the full impact of what Maupin's trying to imbue in the loyal reader.
The book has been slated in some quarters, and it may seem an oddity for anyone coming to Maupin cold, but for me, it was like being reunited with pals I had missed for such a long time.
I'm very, very excited.
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