Boys Like Us (Stonewall Inn Editions)

By Peter McGehee

Book Overview

A comic novel of love and friendship in the age of AIDS.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312069138
• ISBN13: 9780312069131
• Release Date: February 1992
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.2" x 0.5" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

An Enjoyable Tale from the Nicest of Towns

This is one of the first Gay books I read, so you'll forgive a sentimental bias. It's funny, and Toronto is very accurately rendered, a Toronto that's fading into memory.

My favorite gay books

I am putting together a list of gay/lesbian books for teens. This had been among my all-time favorites; when I saw it was still in print, I knew it had to go on the list. Like Weetzie Bat and its sequels, Boys Like Us fits into an American magical realism movement. We lost a leading light in literature with the death of McGehee. Fortunately, Doug Wilson, McGehee's lover, completed the Boys Like Us/Sweetheart series with Labour of Love.

A wonderful and positive gay male voice

The best of McGehee's warm, humorous works, this piece gives an unsentimental and sometimes harrowing look into lives disrupted by AIDS--or, perhaps more to the point, into the lives of men who refuse to let their lives be disrupted by a virus.

Very enjoyable

I found Zero to be extremely likeable, and his group of Toronto friends are familiar, without being stereotypical. The true power of the book lies in McGehee's gift for humor. The Arkansas sequences were particularly funny, filled with some classic Southern eccentrics. The straight characters were more three-dimensional than is often the case in a gay novel. I enjoyed this book, as well as "Sweetheart", the sequel. Readers are fortunate to have these novels as testimonial to McGehee's talent, though we mourn his death.

Buy this book!

This is by far the late Peter McGehee's best book. McGehee managed to put together an outstanding book that examines the lives of several friends, some of whom are HIV positive, some are activists, some are straight, etc. This book is an honest look at everything from gay bars to the AIDS nightmare in less then contemporary Canada. (And the American heartland) Sadly, McGehee has died since this book was written. However, anyone who reads Boys Like Us must not miss Sweetheart, which is the sequel.