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    Babycakes
    Babycakes
    Babycakes
    Audiobook8 hours

    Babycakes

    Written by Armistead Maupin

    Narrated by Alan Cumming

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Narrated by Alan Cumming

    ""Maupin's San Francisco saga careens beautifully on."" —New York Times Book Review

    The fourth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga.

    When an ordinary househusband and his ambitious wife decide to start a family, they discover there’s more to making a baby than 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 piece of fiction to acknowledge the arrival of AIDS.

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 26, 2013
    ISBN9780062259769
    Babycakes
    Author

    Armistead Maupin

    Armistead Maupin is the author of the Tales of the City series, which includes Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn, The Days of Anna Madrigal, and Mona of the Manor. His other books include the memoir Logical Family and the novels Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener. Maupin was the 2012 recipient of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Pioneer Award. He lives in London with his husband, Christopher Turner.

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    Reviews for Babycakes

    4/5

    477 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      My favourite of the TotC series so far.
    • 3/5
      Sigh, the first book in the series that I didn't like. There was just something about the story line and the characters that didn't seem as thorough or complete. Hopefully, the next one will be back tot he usual standards.
    • 3/5
      Never imagine for a moment that Author Maupin is lacking in spinal steel: He kills off a character, a lovely and belovèd character, with the sangfroid of a CIA-trained assassin. It was a painful loss, but it resonated with what was happening in our lives about that time (1984). And there's nothing in any universe anywhere that makes losing someone you've loved easy.

      Why I don't rate the read higher than three stars is simple: Author Maupin lost control of his cast. Scattered from pillar to post, incoherence of events plagues the story, and that severely limits my pleasure in the read. I won't re-read it, but the issue of its uncenteredness is only part of the reason.
    • 4/5
      Very fun book!.. I very much enjoyed the first 3 of this series, and this followed suit perfectly. It is silly...sit-com silly......many of the characters are really caricatures - stereotypical....but Maupin makes you love them and root for them in spite of all their silly stereotypicalness (nice word, huh?).....nice compact chapters that jump from scene to scene and you keep reading cuz you have to find out how they survive their ridiculous situations. I read the others quite a few years ago and the characters and their connections came a little slowly at first, but it eventually all clicked. A little too many drugs taken way too casually to suit me, but we are talking about San Francisco in the early 1980's. No Pulitzer here, but an awful lot of fun!
    • 3/5
      [Babycakes] by Armistead Maupin

      Well, that was a fun romp. Maupin finds silly ways to put his characters into predicaments and then even sillier ways to extricate them. I read this book in one day, a few hours. I am not a fast reader any more. Used to be one. Not now. But his books are easy reading. And fun. And make you laugh out loud.
    • 3/5
      Things start getting a bit darker after the third book: AIDS has shifted Maupin's focus a bit, and he's beginning to get a bit tired of some of his characters. Mona and Mrs Madrigal are reduced to walk-on parts; Mary Ann still has plenty to do in this one, but she has become a far less sympathetic character than she was in the earlier books. Maupin makes the most of the opportunities for comedy that arise out of Michael going to England, and he gives some more depth to the character of Brian, so there's still plenty to smile about, but it doesn't really feel as though there's much ground for optimism.
    • 5/5
      I think this is the best yet of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. In addition to favourite characters Michael alias Mouse, Mary-Ann and Brian, Mona and Mrs Madrigal, we have a handsome young English sailor who jumps ship (the Britannia no less), a gay English lord, and a delightful young aborigine Londoner. If you haven’t guessed some of the action takes place in England.

      I read this some time after reading the preceding Tales of the City books, but very quickly picked up with the familiar characters. Full of unlikely coincidences, Babycakes is not just as funny, possibly even the funniest so far, but is also especially heart-warming with so many endearing individuals, Michael really wins our hearts as does his mischievous young aborigine friend.
    • 5/5
      This is the fourth book in The Tales of the City series and probably the best. The 2nd & 3rd books descended into near stupidity, but this book brings Maupin's characters back older, wiser, and more socially aware. This is one of the first works of fiction to deal with the scourge of AIDS. Still, it remains very funny and heartwarming.
    • 3/5
      Maupin’s Tales of the City series (this is No.4) set in San Francisco is easy to read, gently amusing, lightweight, often sentimental and saccharine. Probably a big influence on TV shows like Friends and Sex In The City. More recently, Alexander McCall Smith has successfully emulated Maupin's achievement of writing his novels in the 44 Scotland Street series as daily newspaper instalments (in The Scotsman).
    • 4/5
      I loved all of the Tales of the City books so much that I read one each day when I was on a week-long beach vacation. I don't normally pay full price for books, but I had only brought the first 3 with me, and ended up buying the last three at B&N.
    • 3/5
      Maupin's delightful and fascinating characters find their way through San Francisco in the late 70s. AIDS and social awareness has crept into the lives of the inhabitants of Barbary Lane. The party is winding down. Michael and Mary Ann are no longer kids.
    • 4/5
      A fun and heartfelt read as always, with an enjoyable American-in-London setup that doesn't romanticize the UK.

      My only caveat is that while I enjoyed the wacky baby-making plot arc, the resolution throws a minor character under the bus to further the arc of our main characters, in a manner that I found distasteful.

      Read this in print, but apparently Alan Cumming narrates the audiobook(!)