Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir

Matthew Perry opens by telling us he should be dead, and what follows explains how a funny, restless boy came so close. At five he was travelling from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuttling between separated parents. At fourteen he was a nationally ranked tennis player in Canada. At twenty-four he landed a lead in a pilot then called Friends Like Us. Fame arrived, but the void it was meant to fill did not budge, and addiction moved into the gap, through hospital stays and spells in rehab.

He writes about all of it with the timing that made Chandler so loved: candid about the family that left him to his own devices, warm about his castmates, clear-eyed about the peace sobriety brought. Read now, after his death in 2023, it is funny and painful in equal measure, and a hand held out to anyone fighting the same fight.