Mary Ann In Autumn

by Armistead Maupin

I bought the freshly-printed paperback at City Lights, a fitting place to buy this latest chapter in the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of our culture wars. Maupin has a dazzling gift for renewing narrative energy, an uncompromising warmth of spirit, and he resisted from the first hwat must have been an overwhelming temptation to make his queer characters more approachable by showing us some who are even queerer.

Mary Ann returns here, and it’s like she’s never left. The horrid Republican harridan of the middle years is gone, and she’s back in town, learning about Facebook and staying with Mouse. She’s not reading her daughter’s sex blog, which makes her blush, and that turns out to be a big mistake.