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Michael Tolliver Lives
by Armistead Maupin
HarperCollins. 277 pages, $25.95

FANS of Armistead Maupin’s magnificent “Tales of the City” series have a reading treat awaiting them. As the title of Maupin’s new novel reveals, Michael Tolliver—“Mouse”—is alive. He’s older (in his mid-fifties) and wiser, an HIV survivor who never expected to be one. And he’s in love, having married Ben, a man who’s “an entire adult younger” than he is, something he also never expected to do.

Maupin is as funny and irreverent as ever, and as relevant. The “Tales” books have always been political, having chronicled contemporary history through the lives of the quirky folks in and around 28 Barbary Lane, presided over by guru-landlady Anna Madrigal.