Sure of You
Written by Armistead Maupin
Narrated by Armistead Maupin
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Inspiration for the Netflix Limited Series, Tales of the City
The sixth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga.
A fiercely ambitious TV talk show host finds she must choose between national stardom in New York and a husband and child in San Francisco. Caught in the middle is their longtime friend, a gay man whose own future is even more uncertain. Wistful and compassionate yet subversively funny, Sure of You is the pitch-perfect sixth novel in Armistead Maupin’s legendary Tales of the City series.
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, and The Days of Anna Madrigal. 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.
More audiobooks from Armistead Maupin
Babycakes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Significant Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Logical Family: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sure of You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5MAYBE THE MOON Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tales of the City Audio Collection: Tales of the City, Books 1-6 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Sure of You
Titles in the series (12)
Tales of the City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Further Tales of the City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tales of the City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5More Tales of the City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Further Tales of the City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sure of You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Significant Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babycakes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Michael Tolliver Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mona of the Manor: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Days of Anna Madrigal: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related audiobooks
Significant Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babycakes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5House Trained Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Michael Tolliver Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Days of Anna Madrigal: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sweet Tooth: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cast: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mona of the Manor: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTales of the City Audio Collection: Tales of the City, Books 1-6 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hotel Living Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Broken Violin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Law of Enclosures Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghost Radio Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Over the Course of a Lifetime Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Garden of Lost and Found Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Thirsty: Confessions of a Fame Whore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Joker: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fruit: A novel about a boy and his nipples Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Later: My Life at the Edge of the World Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Tommy's Tale: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5His Quiet Agent Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Better Angels: A Retelling of Bayard Taylor's "Joseph and His Friend: A Pennsylvania Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoranthology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pumpkin Eater: A Dan Sharp Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Curiosities: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Immaculate Blue: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
A Court of Thorns and Roses Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5And Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Mist and Fury Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Frost and Starlight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Wings and Ruin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hunger Games Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Gods [TV Tie-In]: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Omens: A Full Cast Production Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/511/22/63: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dead Zone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Their Eyes Were Watching God Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Return of the King Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Sure of You
367 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantastic, but goddamn it Mary Ann is a bitch. We'll see how I feel about her after I read the new book...
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Thack seemed to sort something out for a moment.“Sometimes I watch him when he’s playing with Harry or digging in the yard. And I think: This is it, this is the guy I’ve waited for all my life. Then this other voice tells me not to get used to it, that it’ll only hurt more later. It’s funny. You’re feeling this enormous good fortune and waiting for it to be over at the same time.”“You seem happy,” Brian ventured.“I am.”“Well … that’s a lot. I envy you that.”Thack shrugged. “All we’ve got is now, I guess. But that’s all anybody gets. If we wasted that time being scared …”“Absolutely.”In my mind, this book represents an inflection point in this series. This is less a story than A Lesson, Cautioning Against Shallowness!It came a cropper compared to the delirious delights of the earlier books, in my eyes, for that reason. One issue is that I've never for a single instant thought that the marriage of Mary Ann and Brian was in any way a good idea or destined to last. It's been doomed to failure from the get-go. So the end, as it's been coming on, hasn't been suspenseful to me so much as impatience-inducing and irritating. Pull your head out! I want to shout at Brian; Stop being such a user! I want to scream at Mary Ann.So this wasn't a great release of tension but a sour puddle of spilled tea. Not a place for someone to enter the City.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Okay so it's mainly my fault. I constantly make the mistake of believing books that say they are 'stand alone' but part of a series. I'm not sure I ever read one that was truly stand-alone. Reading this was like accompanying a friend to a party where most of the guests are known to your friend but not to you. You end up trapped in some corner hearing about Hilda's chilblains and Edward's bad back, all the time secretly wondering exactly who Hilda and Edward are. Though it's soundly written, and has a clear plot which is outlined on the back cover, it becomes clear that the plot will not be the book's main focus; instead its function is to update a loyal readership on the latest comings and goings of some beloved characters, chilblains and all. It was the only way I could explain the Greece sections (most of which made no sense to me). There was a brief glimmering of drama towards the end, centring on some tragic news a character receives (what a ghoul I am), but even this is short lived. As a stand-alone book, this didn't quite cut it for me.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ok, this one left me cold. I'm not sure what Maupin felt he was up to at this point, but much of the charm that made me enjoy the previous 5 books in this series went right out the window. He turned all of the characters into hideous unkind people who did nothing but act horribly to each other. Michael & Thack - Thack was an ass.....& if I am supposed to care about Michael, the Michael I thought i knew would never put up with that! Mary Ann & Brian - are you kidding me??? I mean what happened to likable innocent Mary Ann from the first 5 books.....walks away from her husband....and child!! for a better job???? She lied, held back life-altering info from her family......an impostor I say!!! Thank God for Mrs. Madrigal!!! The only redeeming one in the whole bunch. Cuz lord knows her daughter Mona is still a negative Nancy...at least she has been consistent. I realize these books were from a different time, and the political tone towards the raging AIDS crisis of the time was always lurking, but it came out in this one rather unpleasantly, sort of sucking all the fun out of the players. Bad stuff happened in all the previous books and they all charmingly found their way, but not in this one. Too much selfish bitterness, lack of compassion & unhappiness for the finale of a quirky funny series that i thoroughly enjoyed up until now. I feel like i should give a 2-star, but the writing is still capable of keeping me flipping those pages frantically, so i'll add the 1/2-star. Just was not as happy as i wanted to be when i got to the next page. Feeling let down.....
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm almost sure that my reading of this one suffered for the fact that I hadn't read the earlier works, but still, in the first half of the book, I'm not sure how reading the rest of the series would have changed my reactions all that much--simply, I was bored, and couldn't bring myself to care about the characters. Their superficiality and inconsiderateness might have been meant to come across as humorous...but for me, they were just annoying and thoughtless. Having read the earlier books, I might have been better able to quickly catch onto the backstories...but the more I learned, the less I wanted to know. All that said, the second half of the book moved much more quickly--and, strangely enough, as the characters moved apart, I had a bit more patience for them. In the end, though, I can't say that the book really ever pulled me in to a space where I wanted to go on or wanted more from Maupin in the future. Chances are, I won't be searching out more of his work, but I certainly won't be searching out more of the series.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Definite sense of an ending: the family at 28 Barbary Lane is breaking up, the seventies are a distant memory, and Mary Ann is turning into even more of a monster than she was in Babycakes. Maupin is evidently in a hurry to get rid of the whole bunch of them and start writing something else again. All the same, this is a good, solid novel that stands up by itself, not just a winding-up session for the series.The Greek interlude is quite amusing (and it's nice to have Mona back for a few pages); presumably Maupin didn't know when he put in the bit about Mrs Madrigal going to see the birthplace of Michael Dukakis's father that she would be played in the TV adaptation of the first three books by Dukakis's cousin?
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Maupin’s Tales of the City series (this is No.6) 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).
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Maupin'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. People are growing up.