

The realities of aging, both distressing and graceful, is a major theme of the book – as well as the generation gap between gay people from the 1970s and 80s and gay people from the 2000s.


As well as further developing familiar characters, it explores the differences between the San Francisco of the 1980s, bearing the brunt of the developing AIDS crisis, and the city in the first decade of the new millennium. The novel represents Maupin's return to the Tales of the City characters some 18 years after the sixth book in the series was published. Michael Tolliver Lives (2007) is the seventh book in the Tales of the City series by San Francisco novelist Armistead Maupin.
