Babycakes

By Armistead Maupin

Book Overview

"An extended love letter to a magical San Francisco."--"New York Times Book Review" When an ordinary househusband and his ambitious wife decide to start a family, they discover there' s more to making a baby then meets the eye. Help arrives in the form of a grieving gay neighbor, a visiting monarch, and the dashing young lieutenant who defects from her yacht. Bittersweet and profoundly affecting, "Babycakes" was the first work of fiction to acknowledge the arrival of AIDS. "Armistead is a true original. His tales are bang up-to-date. They will surprise and maybe even shock you, but, I promise, they will make you laugh."--Ian McKellen "Maupin has a genius for observation. His characters have the timing of vaudeville comics, flawed by human frailty and fueled by blind hop." "--Denver Post" "Armistead Maupin' s San Francisco saga careens beautifully on." --" New York Times Book Review"

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060964073
• ISBN13: 9780060964078
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: HarperCollins Canada, Limited
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.1" x 1.1" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful, quirky, diverse, magical Baghdad by the Bay

The late, great SF Chronicle columnist Herb Caen coined the term Baghdad by the Bay for the city that captured his heart, San Francisco. And Armisted Maupin peopled his Tales of the City series (first serialized in the Chronicle in 1976) with a huge assortment of eccentric, quirky, diverse characters that capture your heart and keep you reading, reading, reading even when you know you should have turned off the light hours ago. Babycakes, in which ambitious Mary Ann (the wide-eyed innocent from the Midwest through whose eyes we earlier came to see an ingenue's view of live and love in the City) has a baby, was the first work of fiction to recognize the scourge of AIDS in SF.Drop dead funny, bittersweet, and enchanting, Babycakes dangles intricate and outrageously interwoven plot threads in front of the readers, and it all just makes you want more, more, more.

A wonderful journey goes abroad

Reading the 'Tales of the City'-Series was such a wonderful experience I could easily repeat it as much as I could. Maupin's style is so great and terrific, it's strange I hadn't heard of him that much, before I read it.The characters are surely some of the best ones ever created in literary history. The developement of the storyline is so surprising and unexpectable it's breath-taking. The twists and turns are so effective, because you seem to know the characters so well, and never had thought... well, you have to explore the secrets by yourself. I have never seen such a developement of characters. The same persons are totally different in the last book than in the first one. It's great.I won't rate every book differently, although they are very different. But they are so great alltogether and so well-connected it's hard to tell them apart.This is wonderful stuff!

My second-favorite in the series

Further Tales went a little too far into the absurd. Babycakes is MUCH better in this regard. Strange things happen, but it's not entirely impossible to suspend disbelief. And like More Tales (my favorite of the series), Babycakes deals sensitively with a number of controversial issues. I was particularly impressed that (unlike some gay authors) Maupin shows the same sensitivity to and in-depth look at the problems his heterosexual characters face (i.e. Brian's infertility) as the problems of his gay characters. I was a bit upset by the off-stage death of a major character in the series from AIDS, but Maupin write well about the affect the death had on his partner and the others who were close to him.

Marvellous!

"Babycakes" is one of the most touching novels in the "Tales of the City" series as it marks the end of the seemingly fun-filled pre-AIDS era, and the beginning of death, despair and tragedy. It's deliciously comic whilst at the same time having essences of profound sadness on every page. Freud would have a field day analysing the symbolic significance of the endless rain that drones on throughout most of the book. More sombre and more political than his first three novels Babycakes is firmly planted in the period of the very early eighties. Maupin is a topical writer and seems to draw influence from his immediate surroundings and the time in which he lives. Although almost twenty years have passed since the early 80s the relevance and importance of his subject matter remains undiminished by time.

Oh baby! What a book!

I'm sad just knowing that I only have two books left to read in the series. I intend to go as long as I can between them just so I can stretch the enjoyment out as far as possible. Babycakes (vol 4) is by far the best book since the first Tales. Suspenseful, funny and sad (Michael's conversation with Mrs. Madrigal about Jon brought me to tears), Never once do I think these characters are phoney or unbelievable. The way Maupin writes, you'd think he'd spent his whole life with his characters (maybe he did). Read it!!