The Things We Promise
by J. C. Burke
Allen & Unwin

Year 11 student Gemma is counting down to the school formal. It’s the early 1990s when obsessions included Jane Fonda workout videos, Pretty Woman, Jump Street and Moonlighting. It was also a time when there was a huge amount of panic about a new ‘gay cancer’.

Gemma’s older brother Billy returns home to Australia from New York and has promised to work wonders with hair and make-up for Gemma and her friends. However, priorities change when Gemma finds out that Billy’s boyfriend Saul has died from an AIDS-related illness and Billy is HIV positive.

J. C. (Jane) Burke lives in Sydney and decided to write the young adult fiction because she was astounded by how little her two (now adult) children knew about HIV/AIDS. Not only about the disease but about the fear and ignorance that surrounded it.

In the 1990s AIDS meant that sufferers died ‘after a short illness’. Thanks to the Grim Reaper ads, a percentage of the population was paranoid, unreasonable and downright nasty even though there was plenty of information around.

As a nurse during that time, J. C. Burke has some stories to tell about what happened back then, including bus drivers putting on dish washing gloves to take the money from anyone who looked ill and a store owner asking a nurse not shop at his store because she nursed AIDS patients.

As Gemma tries to navigate the freak show that had become her life, some friends abandon her and new friends emerge to help her on her journey. Gemma has to draw on all her strength to navigate the ignorance, fear and uncertainty surrounding her as well coping with her beloved brother’s decline. This is a powerful story for those who lived through that time and those who are born afterwards.

Lezly Herbert