SOURCE: "From Bath-House to Bleeper," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4536, March 9-15, 1990, p. 258.

In the following review, Glyde favorably assesses the Tales novels, discussing the difference in tone of the first three volumes with that of the last three.

The daily column in the form of a story (no rumination allowed): it worked for Dickens, and Armistead Maupin, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, quickly saw an advantage in the agonizing hurry to get each instalment out on time. Current events and absurdities could be skinned and fictionalized immediately. What Maupin calls "defenders of serious journalism" complained, but to no avail. In this landscape, there are no expanses of contemplative and plot-wasting sky. Everything connects tightly and tantalisingly. There is much for lovers of fiction (and soaps): love, despair (but not for long), idiosyncrasy and the death of the really bad, carefully mixed with the preoccupations of...