SOURCE: "Crisis in the Beloved City," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4436, April 8-14, 1988, p. 384.

In the following review of Significant Others, Mars-Jones contends that the story lacks the "inventiveness" and "high camp" of Maupin's earlier pre-AIDS novels.

Significant Others is the fifth in Armistead Maupin's endearing Tales of the City series of sagas, about high and low life (but never depressingly low life) in San Francisco. In each book, Maupin plants a new generation of plot and character-seedlings, re-pots some mature blooms and thins out some others. He has the literary equivalent, in his wry, easy-going prose, of green fingers. He knows exactly when to be sharp and when sentimental.

If there is a break in the sequence, it is between volume three (Further Tales of the City) and four (Babycakes). The cause of the break can be stated very simply: AIDS. It's not just that the...