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  • Published: 2 July 2018
  • ISBN: 9781784161040
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

Logical Family

A Memoir





Long awaited and worth that wait - Armistead Maupin finally tells us his story

In this funny, poignant and unflinchingly honest memoir, one of the world’s best-loved storytellers explains how he evolved from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to claim their own lives. It is a journey that leads him from the racism and misogyny of mid-century North Carolina to a homoerotic Navy initiation ceremony in the jungles of Vietnam to an awkward conversation about girls with President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office of the White House. After losing his virginity to another man 'on the very spot where the first shots of the Civil War were fired', Maupin packs his earthly belongings into his Opel GT (including a portrait of a Confederate ancestor) and heads west to that strangest of strange lands: San Francisco in the early 1970’s.

  • Published: 2 July 2018
  • ISBN: 9781784161040
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

About the author

Armistead Maupin

Armistead Maupin is the author of Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, Maybe the Moon, The Night Listener, Michael Tolliver Lives and Mary Ann in Autumn. Three television miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney were made from the first three Tales novels. The Night Listener became a feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette. Maupin lives in San Francisco with his husband, Christopher Turner.

For more information on Armistead Maupin and his books, see his website at www.armisteadmaupin.com

Also by Armistead Maupin

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Praise for Logical Family

I fell in love with Maupin’s effervescent Tales of the City decades ago, and his genius turn at memoir is no less compelling. Logical Family is a must read.

Mary Karr

Master storyteller Armistead Maupin — the man who defined the difference between ‘a biological family’ and ‘a logical family,’ who is both gifted with fearless art and the ability to speak for millions — finally tells his own story. Logical Family is a sweet, filthy peach of a memoir from a cultural explosion of a man

Caitlin Moran

An enormously talented writer—witty but always sympathetic, generous in showing us the secrets of his heart.... By writing about what’s seemingly different Armistead Maupin always manages to capture what’s so hilariously painfully true for all of us.

Alan Cumming

Logical Family is a beautiful memoir — so tender and funny and dignified and kind that it left me a little weepy

Library Journal

There could be no more appropriate title for Maupin’s own tale, which relates his coming of age from a rigidly conservative Southern childhood to one of the most notable writers of the 20th century. Maupin writes vibrantly…. With just the right amounts of humor, thoughtfulness, and poignancy."

Booklist

It is easy to understand Maupin’s reputation for geniality, given his openheartedness as a person and his honesty as a writer; and that will make this delightful chronicle attractive to a wide range of readers, whether they’re familiar with his fiction or not.

Amy Tan

Delightful, humorous, explicit in places, deeply sad – and deliciously gossipy. In short, he’s a hero: and this is a total treat

Bookseller

I read Logical Family as slowly as I could, quite as I could never have read any of the Tales volumes all those years ago. The pleasure of its chapters, each a short story focussing on another member of Armistead's extended tribe, was such a heartwarming delight, I couldn't bear to have it pass me by. It was like having the great man visit and sit smoking and gossiping from an armchair at the foot of the bed.

Patrick Gale

Should be read by anyone who has ever loved and lost . . . Maupin still has the knack of being able to make you laugh and cry on the same page

Evening Standard

Full of admissions . . . stuffed full of delicious anecdotes . . . Logical Family will be nectar for the geekier element of Tales devotees, as it reveals for the first time the provenance of many of the characters and storylines.

Buzzfeed

You can never get enough of Armistead Maupin. Logical Family has been long awaited.

Literary Review

[A] highly readable memoir.. .moving and with prize moments.

Observer

Logical Family is everything I hoped it would be... funny, filthy and profound.

Red Magazine

A series of snapshots into a complex life filled with longing, lust, loss and, ultimately, joy

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