I have always loved Armistead Maupin and was looking forward to the treat of the latest (and sadly last) Tales of the City book. The days of Anna Madrigal picks up where Mary Ann in Autumn left off – with the original core cast of characters from the Tales of the City series (mainly Brian, Michael and Mary Ann) enjoying growing old a little bit disgracefully. By this point Anna Madrigal, the logical mother of them all, is into her nineties and has some unfinished business to do.

So Brian and his new wife (whom he first met many books earlier) set off with Anna back to Winnemucca to the whore house where Anna grew up as Andy in a very different America. Anna has some unfinished business to attend to before it’s too late.

Meanwhile, Michael is reluctantly being dragged off to the Burning Man festival by his much younger husband. Burning Man is, of course, the most natural place for Michael and Mary Ann to be – it epitomises what San Francisco itself was long before the rise of Silicon Valley turned it into a playground for the super rich.

Burning Man sounds exactly as I have always imagined it to be, and like Michael it’s my idea of hell, rather than the San Francisco of the early books which was my idea of heaven (my idea of alternative lifestyles is clearly frozen in aspic in the late 1990s where I could relate to it).

The story picks up pace as the drama plays itself out in Winnemucca and Anna has a sudden sense of foreboding as she knows she needs to get to Burning Man to join the others. The climax comes as dramatic events happen to the cast of characters that we’ve known and loved for so long. I held my breath in hope that this book (and indeed the series of nine books) ended well for them.