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*Thank you NetGalley for the copy of this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. *
Where We Go From Here by Lucas Rocha is a Portuguese translated novel about the lives of three young men and how HIV has impacted their experiences as gay men. Ian just found out he is HIV positive. Victor finds out the person he’s interested in is HIV positive and Henrique has been diagnosed for 3 years. The intertwining stories of these men beautifully deals with what it means to love, grow, trust and educate whilst dealing with the diagnosis of HIV.
Brazilian author Rocha attempts to dissect modern misconceptions regarding HIV, especially those present in his home country, Brazil, which has been largely recognised as having one of the most effective responses to the HIV epidemic. Despite it being over 50 years since the largest outbreak in the West of AIDS and HIV, social perception of the virus has changed very little, with fears today surrounding hugging, kissing and starting a sexual relationship with someone HIV positive. The lack of accurate information regarding the topic has created a society largely unaware of how the virus is dealt with in the 21st century. This is where Rocha comes in to bridge the gap in the market.
While this book is fictional, I think because of the focus on HIV, there is a lot of long conversations which are purely there for the reader to learn from, as opposed to being beneficial to the development of the characters themselves. This ties in with fact that I think most of the characters are very two dimensional, and their whole existence in this book is to educate the readers about HIV. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because I think it is indeed really educational, but it was hard to really like the characters when they barely have a life outside of their status.
One of the best things about this book, however, was the accurate range in emotions to the virus. While this book could have focused on “it’s no longer dangerous therefore you’re wrong for thinking bad of me”, it instead acknowledges the nuances of the topic as well as the fact that humans are a victim to the falsehoods we grow up hearing. No one person is portrayed as being more correct or superior because of their relationship with the virus, but the characters are portrayed on their own journey of confronting their perceptions and what they can do to change their mindset, which was really well done!
One last comment – despite the book being set in Brazil, I didn’t really feel like it had the Brazilian setting which I was hoping for. Due to the fact that this book is very much focused on the virus over the characters, other aspects of the book like writing, characters and setting take a slight step back. The only way I could describe this book is as if it’s a mix of fiction and nonfiction because the fictional aspect isn’t really emphasised too much.
Overall, a really good educational read and a massive achievement from the author, but I felt it could have improved on the ‘fictional’ side of the book.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐/5