SOURCE: A review of Significant Others, in Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 19, 1987, p. 15.

In the following favorable review, Baldwin discusses the development of character and theme in Significant Others.

First, up popped Tales of the City in 1978, a collection of his serialized newspaper columns chronicling the hopelessly, comically tangled lives of selected fictional soul mates from widely disparate sexual, geographic and social orientations—and all this in a charmed, anything-possible San Francisco. There followed More Tales of, Further Tales, and Babycakes (a communal nickname). Now, almost 10 years later, Armistead Maupin's spool of labyrinthine plot, barbed-wire dialogue (that doesn't really sting long), and playful trend-skewering is winding its way unflaggingly on. Well, almost unflaggingly.

If you've been tracking and giggling over Maupin's jolly crew all along, no explanation is necessary; if however you come to Significant Others like a virgin, some explanation is possible. The first Maupin one...