Customer Reviews

Boys Like Us (Stonewall Inn Editions)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Boys Like Us" is the first installment of Peter McGeehe's trilogy--with "Sweetheart", and "Labor of Love" being parts two and three respectively. Labor of Love was written by Doug Wilson, Mr. McGehhe's lover due to the demise of the first author.

In Boys like us, we meet the main characters that will form part of the trilogy.

Randy, who is an actor and has AIDS, his friend Eddie (Zero) McNoo (who narrates the story) who recently had a lover, David, for eight years and now is Dating Clay.

The novel is set in Toronto with a brier trip to Little Rock Arkansas since zero attends his mother's wedding to J. B. The trip is interrupted by Randy getting very sick.

The novel is set in the eighties where we dealt with the AIDS casualties and horrific treatments. The plot is surrounded by Toronto's gay night life, with Searcy and Jesús Las Vegas as an older (Searcy) and a young and coming (Jesús) drag queens and their struggle to keep their cabaret open--falling pray to development.

The first installment ends with Randy meeting Alan and after recovering from his overdose of sleeping pills flying to Vancouver to film his latest movie; Clay and Zero break up their relationship and Zero starts writing again and moves with his old boyfriend, David as a "roomate."

It's easy to forget how AIDS was a devastating plague before the developments of the drug "cocktails" that have made the disease a chronic one instead of a lethal one. I recommend this book for those younger than forty who missed the full blown AIDS epidemic. I hope you'll take the time to read the full trilogy. It is part of GLBT history that should not be forgotten.

Anyone looking for genuine storytelling need not look here. The novel is made up of cardboard characters mouthing quips instead of dialog. It's sentimental, dull and completely unrealistic.

This book has no redeeming value. As a gay man, I found nothing in this book to identify with or even recognize. It is as if Mr. McGeehee is writing an academic thesis instead of a novel. The characters are shallow to the point of being one-dimensional. Not one of his better ones. I realize this opinion is contrary to the previous reviews, but frankly I couldn't get past page 50 anyway.