I haven't read the original books by Armistead Maupin, so I don't know if the cheesy soap opera tone of this graphic novel adaptation is in there or if it is just a function of distilling down all the main plot points to fit them in a slim volume.

A young single woman with the on-the-nose name of Singleton moves to San Francisco to make it on her own. She gets to know the landlady and other tenants in her apartment building, and we get to know all their romantic entanglements, which frequently revolve around infidelity. There's a whole lot of hooking up and breaking up. To add to the drama, terminal illness, being closeted, homophobia, pregnancy, a private investigator, and suicide are tossed into the mix, and then the ending really goes over the top with blackface, pedophilia, and accidental death. Too many of the plot developments depend on "it's a small world" type coincidences

Frankly, it's like three or four seasons of All My Children boiled down into a book that takes less than an hour to read.

Also, I always feel weird when the book is subject to the Google Translate game. This is the English translation of a French graphic novel adapting an novel originally written in English. I'm curious if the translators went back to Maupin's original novel as a source to reference his exact words or tone or if they just do a straight translation from the French and call it a day.

In the end, reading this brief graphic novel felt more like reading a Soap Opera Digest weekly recap than watching the soap itself. I'm almost curious to check out Maupin's first novel to get the full effect, but I doubt I will. ( )