Michael Pedersen - Boy Friends

What an enchanting and astonishingly compelling read: beautifully, bouncingly and sparklingly written. A book that leaps so assuredly from joy to sorrow, from hilarity to lamentation and back to laughter again, is rare and to be treasured. Above all I came away feeling how lucky both Michael Pedersen and Scott Hutchison were to have found each other. A friend is a masterpiece of nature, Emerson said and this book is as perfect a portrait of that natural masterpiece as I have ever read. Stephen Fry

Boy Friends is a love letter to friendship. Michael Pedersen hauntingly captures the exhilaration and the romance of fine friendship and the terror and bewilderment at the loss of it. Boy Friends is gut-wrenching and yet gallus too taking us on a rollercoaster journey of love and loss that makes you say to yourself, more than once, yes, thats it exactly. Jackie Kay

With a dazzling and inventive use of language as is befitting of a poet of his reputation, this sweetly unconventional work by Michael Pedersen, whilst dripping in raw grief, is uncommonly romantic, irreverent and at times laugh-out-loud funny. A delight really. And thats that. Shirley Manson (Garbage)

Michael writes with true sensitivity and power. His words burrow down to the core of it all while at the same time offering the soaring perspective of the poet-soul. Deeply felt, carefully crafted, his language firing with pace and wit. Kae Tempest

It lifted my spirits in the way Ali Smith does. Val McDermid

As tender as honeysuckle and as bracing as a Hebridean beach. Boy Friends makes you feel as if youve gone on a holiday with someone dazzling. Im ordering lots of copies for my boy friends. Mark Cousins

This beautiful book is overflowing with pathos and deep humanity. Send it to every friend youve ever loved. Charlotte Church

Those hungry for the bone-deep truth about grief will devour Michael Pedersens account of a friend lost Boy Friends takes us into the friendships of Pedersens life; the boys and men who were, still are in some cases, his great loves. The most devastating, seductive and achingly funny writing of all is reserved for his remembrances of Scott, who lives on so vitally in the space between Pedersens words. A love letter of friendship thats so rarely written, Boy Friends is a dazzling act of generosity and an entirely original blast of non-fiction. Terri White

Michaels writing is exactly as playful and invigorating as the man himself. His unique signature of honest vulnerability and bravery is always arresting and generous in a world where most find it safer to dampen and cloak their true spirit. Praise be for all this book brings us. Ewen Bremner

Like the best hugs, Pedersens writing is tight, warm and comforting. Through pain and loss comes sweetness and love in a book youll want to hand to all your friends. Monisha Rajesh

Boy Friends is a tender, glowing thing, sincere and open and wonderful; exactly the balm that toxic stew we call masculinity needs right now. Kirstin Innes

Sensitive, urgent, passionate it reminds us to hold those we love close. Cal Flyn

To locate gratitude in grief is an achievement. To map that journey out with such honesty and humour is a genuine triumph. Darren McGarvey

A writer that binds us, helps us celebrate the best things about being human and what makes us crackle up with both wonder and laughter. Gemma Cairney

A kaleidoscopic, helter-skelter, hedonistic, Henry Milleresque hurtle through the grief and shock in the aftermath of the suicide of a much-loved male friend spins off into an elegy for friendship itself in all its lifelong manifestations. Quirkily, deeply, painfully personal. Liz Lochhead

Honest reflections on the gut punch of grief are a precious commodity. Friends die. And if we live long enough, loss will hit us many times. Boy Friends pays beautiful tribute both to the treasure and joy of friendship and the pain and bewilderment of grief a gift to anyone who loves anyone. Jo Browning Wroe

I loved this book. Im going to tell my friends about it and then Im going to double my efforts to be a better friend The book is about so much more than loss. It made me wish to be as good a friend to those I love as Michael is, more than that, it made me wish Michael was my friend. Ricky Ross (Deacon Blue)

Part portrait of the artist, part In Memoriam, the rich seam of loss and glory in Pedersens masterful conjuration with its fizzing lingo, with its wisecracks and insights makes for a compelling and unforgettable read! Very moving whilst curiously humorous. Daljit Nagra

Inventive, true, absorbing, funny, elegiac. This is a wonderful book that voices something very special. Helen Mort

Boy Friends is a funny, poignant and thoughtful exploration into the bonds of male friendship. Its a terrific read. Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub)

A book as full of joy and gratitude as it is of grief and regret, Boy Friends refuses to consign lost friends to the shadows. James Robertson

This book broke my heart and made me cry. Thanks, Michael. As if I didnt have enough problems with the end of the world and trying to find ointment for the dogs rash. Its also really beautiful and funny. Just like the author. Dominic Hoey

Pedersen is intoxicating company by turns giddy and tender, loquacious and recklessly honest. Clare Pollard

Michaels beautiful words are like someone unleashing murmurations of psychedelic-patterned butterflies toward you words, or more gifts, anchored with love, grief and the ambient longing that perhaps always accompanies the ability to love. Dot Allison

With staggering sensitivity, lyrical eloquence and razor-sharp wit, Michael Pedersens Boy Friends shines a rainbow of light onto the beautiful and often heartbreaking nature of human connection. Emun Elliott

If charm can save Scotland, Michael Pedersen has it in spades. And if love can save the world, this book proves hes got that too. Nick Currie (Momus)

Boy Friends is a beautifully realised rendering of a relationship that has endured even beyond death, a testament to male friendships everywhere, and a heart-shaped hole filled with words and poetry and glittering memories. What was dark is made new and blooming by Pedersens incredible talent and emotional range. Alan Bissett

Inimitable, exceptional and very, very beautiful. Jeff Barrett

This is a gorgeous and courageous book, the writing is so beautiful and evocative. Salena Godden

Joyful and comic but with a stone of sadness at its centre. A playful and original memoir about the beauty and craziness of friendship; a lament for loss and an assertion of the value and privilege of friendship. David Shrigley

to the friends we love to excess

yet still

not nearly

enough

&

to h-craft (a-l-w-a-y-s)