Reviews for Boys like us

The average rating for Boys like us based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-11-19 00:00:00 Credell Reynolds I started reading this book three years ago - I kind of stopped reading, not this book but stopped reading novels altogether. I miss escaping into a story and am now making sure that I slow down and read. As I took so long to get back to this book, my thoughts are soft on the first half of the book and strong on the last half. Published 20 years ago, reading even the most "current" stories is still a time that has passed. The idea of "coming out" is, thankfully, becoming a task of the past. Boys and girls are just themselves - gay or straight. I know this is definitely not the case for all, and coming out is still a powerful experience. These book contains well-written, exceptional stories in all varieties of experiences around that brutal, uplifting, and redeeming task of coming out. There really is all kind of settings and undertakings by the writers in their quest to live their most honest lives, whether honest with themselves, lovers, or family. The revelations put forth in this tome are stark and not always easy to process, but I take them as the true sharings of talented storytellers.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-08-30 00:00:00 Vincent Lombardi The honesty is great... there are so many stories about sex and attraction during puberty (which really demystifies childhood innocence). But then there is a big bag of sexual frustration or repression. And in many stories, out of that hard soil gay love emerges. The chronological order by year of "coming out" also tracks some development in perceptions of homosexuality from the 1950 through the 1990s. Well written and very illuminating anecdotes about "coming out". The most intriguing stories were "He's One, Too" by Allan Gurganus and "Money Talks" by David Drake. Guganus' story is about himself as a boy who is attracted to one of his father's friends, named Dan, and how this attraction becomes his first realization of his homosexuality. It is written with nostalgiac longing demonstrating how this fascination develops into Dan becoming an ideal figure of beauty for him. Drake's story highlight the aspect of the difficulty of coming out all the time in which he humorously describes coming out to his hired investment banker.