But it does a thing which is very interesting to me: it uses the modern day context, the one where AIDS isn't a death sentence, where gay relationships are much more normal, and where we all know what happened during the worst of the crisis, as an unstated part of the narrative. The hope is there, but it isn't in the novel, it's in the world we currently inhabit. And that's an interesting thing to have done.

That's very interesting and cool. I've really only seen it done the other way; in Tiny Pieces of Skull, Roz Kaveney's fictionalised memoir about life among trans sex workers in 70s Chicago, ofc the narrator doesn't know what's coming. Roz herself made it out ofc, but I felt the shadow of AIDS very powerfully a few times when I was reading - especially near the end where the narrator basically wonders how the others are doing/will do now she herself is back in London. I like the idea of a happier version of it!

That ending to Yale's life is amazing.