Found on the "Bargain Priced" shelf at Barnes & Noble.

I loved the first five Tales of the City books, but the sixth book was a disappointment for me. I did not like the person Mary Ann had become after being a local celebrity went to her head. By the end of the book I quite actively disliked her. But this seventh book, set twenty years later, is about Michael, and was just as enthralling as the first five books.

Unlike previous books, this one is just Michael's story, and the narrative is even in first person, his point of view. Other characters are still around of course – best friend Brian and his (and Mary Ann's) now grown daughter, Shawna, and an elderly Anna Madrigal. Thack is long gone, but Michael is still living in the same house, and is now married to the sweet and much younger Ben.

Michael tells us his story with wit and deprecation. We follow him to Florida, where he visits his ailing mother and ultra-religious brother and sister-in-law. Michael refers to them as the biologicals, and his other, more accepting and loving family, the characters mentioned above, as the logicals, a term I love.

My favorite quote in the book:

“As she fiddled with the piping on the slipcover I could see that her hands were the only place where her age was evident. I've noticed this about myself as well. We can fool ourselves about our changing faces, but our hands creep up on us. One day we look down at them and realize they belong to our grandparents.”

I had this exact revelation a couple of years ago, when I looked down one day and saw my grandmother's hand. Which overjoyed me, as I adored her and miss her.

Mary Ann is now living in Connecticut with her second husband, but she does make a brief appearance towards the end of the book, where she and Michael have an awkward and stilted reunion (and under trying circumstances), and then she breaks down and cries and insinuates that there was more to her moving away than the advancement of her career. She's not redeemed in my eyes, and I'm hesitant to pick up the next book, MARY ANN IN AUTUMN. But I do look forward to the last book, THE DAYS OF ANNA MADRIGAL, and I cannot skip a book in a series, so I'm just going to have to trust Mr. Maupin to bring Mary Ann full circle and make me like her again.

I zipped through this book in a day and a half, giving up some sleep to do so, something I don't have the energy for very often. But it was that good.

Clearing some shelves and taking some books and DVDs to Half Price Books.