Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin

Hands up if you've considered moving to San Francisco purely on the strength of 'Tales of the City'. Hands up if you've been to San Francisco and gone looking for 28 Barbary Lane. Hands up if you can quote long stretches by heart and 'babycakes' has entered your vocabulary as a term of endearment. Hands up if you've insisted friends read it, if you've bought them copies, if you've given one to your mother.

First published as a serial in San Francisco area newspapers in the mid-1970s, 'Tales of the City' was aimed at a mass audience, and accordingly began with the super-straight (in all respects) Mary Ann Singleton's move to San Francisco, before introducing an ever-broadening range of LGBT and other characters, beginning with her neighbour Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, another refugee from the red states; the prototypical Bohemian Mona Ramsay; and their landlady Anna Madrigal, interacting in densely interlocking plotlines that required another five books to play out. Although the original journalistic format produced a certain glibness in the one-liners and cliffhangers, the characters are fully-dimensional and sympathetic. 'Tales of the City' is the great novel of chosen family, as the residents of 28 Barbary Lane live in increasing intimacy under the cannabis-scented wing of Mrs Madrigal, "the mother of us all." Maupin's vision of Oz made it harder than ever to stay in Kansas. [Diana ben-Aaron]