Armistead Maupin’s nine-volume Tales of the City chronicle is a cultural icon. Among other things, it’s the story of gay life in San Francisco from the late 1970s, through the AIDS crisis and ending in the present-day. His new book Logical Family – a title he has borrowed from his creation, the weed-smoking landlady of 28 Barbary Lane, Anna Madrigal – refers to a diverse group of people that are chosen as family.

Beginning with his first attempt at writing at the age of five – the piece was a letter that his mother helped him draft to a three-year-old girl who’d fallen down an abandoned well in California – through his childhood, his sexual awakening as a gay man, his time in Vietnam, and an awkward and surreal experience meeting President Nixon at the White House, Maupin’s life has been varied and fascinating. Having grown up in Raleigh, North Carolina in a staunchly Republican family, Maupin doesn’t shy away from the tenets of his conservative past, despite his status now as an icon in the LGBTI community. His father once marched the family out of a Sunday church service because black folks were invited to join the whites for communion at the rail. As a student he ‘railed against Socialists and peaceniks’ who called for boycotts of businesses supporting segregation. He admits that he doesn’t know who that 20-year-old was, and finds it hard to like him very much.

Maupin’s memoir is a love letter. Whether he’s writing about his friendships with Rock Hudson, Harvey Milk, Christopher Isherwood and Ian McKellen, or about the sweet relationship he had with his granny (the inspiration for Anna Madrigal) or his mother, Maupin’s delivery is warm and candid. Reading this memoir is like being wrapped in a warm blanket of words and memory. 

Jason Austin is a book buyer at Readings Carlton.