Mona of the Manor
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4.3 • 12 Ratings
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
'A breeze' The Times
‘Delightful comedy of manners' iPaper
‘A welcome tenth instalment of his iconic Tales Of The City saga’ Mail on Sunday
‘A witty novel about identity and finding a family in 1980s England’ Woman&Home
'The message still shines out in the new book: find the people who love and understand you' The Scotsman
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The tenth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga.
When Mona Ramsey married Lord Teddy Roughton to secure his visa—allowing him to remain in San Francisco to fulfil his wildest dreams—she never imagined she would, by age 48, be the sole owner of Easley House, a romantic country manor in the UK. Now, with her adopted son, Wilfred, Mona has opened Easley’s doors to paying guests to keep her inherited English manor afloat.
As they welcome a married American couple to Easley, Mona and Wilfred discover their new guests’ terrible secret. Instead of focussing on the imminent arrival of old friend Michael Tolliver and matriarch Anna Madrigal, Mona will need to use her considerable charm, willpower and wiles to set things right before Easley’s historic Midsummer ceremony.
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in 1980s San Francisco and beyond. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Maupin's satisfying 10th Tales of the City novel (after The Days of Anna Madrigal) transports his familiar bawdiness from San Francisco to the English countryside. It's 1993, and Rhonda and Ernie Blaylock, a conservative couple from North Carolina, discover their vacation rental in the Cotswolds to be more ramshackle than advertised. The owner, Mona Ramsey, a 48-year-old American widow featured in Maupin's previous novels, inherited the house from her marriage-of-convenience husband. She skirts financial ruin while managing the property with brusque honesty and general carelessness alongside her charming but clumsy 26-year-old adopted son, Wilfred, who is Aboriginal Australian, gay, and single. When Rhonda confesses to Mona and Wilfred that Ernie beats her, mother and son hatch a scheme to hide her on the premises and tell Ernie she's run off. Side plots involve Mona's tenuous relationship with the local postmistress, Rhonda grappling with the homophobia conditioned in her by her upbringing, and Wilfred's frustrated attempts to find a boyfriend. All the Maupin hallmarks are in place, including a righteous conviction that conservative viewpoints are immoral and stupid, diverse queer characters, fade-to-black sex scenes, and a fun if silly plot. Fans of the series will relish this heaping plate of comfort food.
Customer Reviews
I tried to sip….
… but it was no use…. I binged!