SOURCE: "Soap without Suds," in New Statesman and Society, Vol. 3, No. 90, March 2, 1990, pp. 36, 38.

In the following review of Sure of You, Gerrard praises the story as a "bright, funny, engaging and loquacious soap."

Writers—like Dickens or even Fay Weldon—have written newspaper serials which have then appeared in novel from; others—like Trollope, Anthony Powell, Catherine Cookson—have written novel series. Armistead Maupin has combined both, and become a cult. It is easy to see why. Sure of You, the sixth and final novel in his Tales of the City sequence—written in installments over the years—has a narrative as easy to pick up as The Archers after a long holiday, and as hard to put down as any good potboiler.

Set in San Francisco, Sure of You is about the contemporary life of the city as much as any of its inhabitants. Each vignette—the...