A decade ago, Armistead Maupin boldly declared that it was over. The Days of Anna Madrigal, the ninth in his illustrious queer novel cycle Tales of the City, was, he claimed, the last outing for the residents of 28 Barbary Lane. But ever since the first of the Tales was published in 1978, the lure of the “logical family” has proved irresistible. Maupin is back with a tenth instalment. How tuneful is this unexpected encore?
This iteration of the Tales is set in the early 1990s, and helmed by Anna Madrigal’s daughter Mona Roughton (previously Mona Ramsey). She has inherited Easley House in the Cotswolds – based on the real Stanway House in Gloucestershire – after the death of her gay husband Lord Teddy Roughton. Domineering Mona is a riff on the eccentric lord of the manor figure: a weed-smoking, fiery-haired diva who, by her own admission, “tends to bring a water cannon to a gunfight”. While Mona and her mother share the same kindness, self-possession and generosity of spirit, Mona is a much larger than life incarnation of these traits.
Larger than life, too, is Easley itself. It has “a rambling structure with deep gables cut into a steep roof. The limestone had darkened with weather and age to a variegated orange-grey, like the hide of a tiger. There were wedding cake crenellations along the top and a front door so imposing you could see it from a great distance.”
While 28 Barbary Lane idealised a rainbow vision of San Franciscan progressiveness, so Maupin’s Easley is both loving homage to and caricature of a very particular kind of aristocratic Englishness: Wodehousian, Saltburn-adjacent, highly Americanised. There are bats in the eaves, shenanigans with groundsmen, earthy regulars in the local pub; scotch eggs and scrumpy are consumed, and there’s the promise of a lavish summer solstice party replete with morris dancers.
As is so often the case in the country house tradition that Maupin is queering, Easley’s future is anything but secure. To keep this place of “storybook dilapidation” afloat, Mona decides to take in paying guests, regaling them with deliciously fabricated tales about previous owners. Enter American tourists Rhonda and Ernie Blaylock. Rhonda is an ingenue whose fish-out-of-water delight in Easley’s beauty and novelty gives her something of a resemblance to Mary Ann Singleton. By contrast, her husband – an odious and unfeeling Republican – is the cartoonish villain of the piece. When commenting on how she, as an American, settled into life in England, Mona remarks that “Easley is a great teacher”. It is at Easley that Rhonda comes to learn things about herself and her marriage that change the course of her life, and the novel, significantly.
Interwoven with this main plot are the staple characters and values of sexual openness integral to Maupin’s work. The mercurial grande dame Anna Madrigal and Mona’s erstwhile confidante – her “Babycakes” – Michael Tolliver both make an appearance. Throughout, Mona is in the midst of a messy tryst with Poppy, the village postmistress. Mona’s mixed-race butler, Wilfred, is her gay adopted son, who shares his mother’s propensity for end-of-the-pier gags and shooting from the hip. Maupin’s typically Dickensian combination of social realism and broad comedy is here, too: the farcical high jinks of this queer utopia are always chastened, with the shadow of Aids ever present. Reflections on San Francisco are sobering: “The streets of Castro seem full of ghosts today, skeleton men covered in purple lesions.”
Indeed, some of the better and more immersive writing occurs when the action moves away from Easley. In the middle of the narrative, bored with essentially being the only gay in the village, 26-year-old Wilfred hops on a train for the bright lights of London – Soho to begin with, and then Hampstead Heath. On the heath, where “the air seemed ripe with the promise of unspilled seed”, there’s a sexy and vividly recounted episode of Wilfred’s cruising and cottaging: “heads bobbing in the shadows, the commingled pungency of poppers and wet leaves, the guttural cheerleading of onlookers when someone was on the verge of coming. It was Bacchanalian, sure, but there was a feeling of safety, too, of brotherhood even, in these deep Shakespearean woods.”
As well as bringing more heat and corporeality to the novel’s sexual mores, Wilfred’s presence in the novel serves other useful roles, though these could be pushed a little further. Most notably, he sees through Mona’s performative bigness and bluster, and has opportunities to support her when needed. When Mona’s relationship with Poppy founders due to Poppy’s transphobia, it is Wilfred who lends quiet counsel as Mona reckons with Poppy’s “failure of … heart … and empathy”. Wilfred’s combination of unassuming tenderness and questing spirit make him a typical Maupin figure, but his inner life and origins are only lightly sketched here. If an 11th novel is in the pipeline, it wouldn’t surprise me if it gave more space to Wilfred’s voice and experience.
For all its colourful ribaldry and appealing warmth, some aspects of the narrative are less successful. I found the fleeting treatment of significant plot moments odd, and the tendency for set pieces to be heavily prefaced is puzzling. The ending, too, falls curiously flat, with the long-trailed high drama of the midsummer party fizzling out within a few pages. In fact, there’s something hasty about the way the novel draws to a close: the crime at the centre of the denouement feels implausible, its emotional ramifications seemingly ignored. And though shot through with pleasingly tongue-in-cheek lols, sass and double entendres, much of the dialogue throughout is heavily expositional. It either too conspicuously works to present “issues” – as in the discussion between Mona and Rhonda about sexuality and faith – or to force the plot forward.
But perhaps that’s taking this knowingly unserious novel too seriously? Good-natured and entertaining enough, intent as it is on highlighting the importance of pleasure, Mona of the Manor is really an extra little gift for Maupin’s fans – and it will delight them.
• Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin is published by Doubleday (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
