I Remember Everything by Fiona Wilkes is a painful, tender, honest and deeply emotional debut LGBT fiction novel about love, friendship, chosen family, memory and loss.
Trigger Warning: The novel contains confronting descriptions of illness and death, as well as themes of homophobia, transphobia, violence, and drug use.
Set largely in Bristol and London during the late 1970s and 1980s, the story follows Billie as she leaves behind a conservative upbringing and steps into her life as a young queer woman discovering who she truly is. At university in Bristol and later in London, she finds a diverse group of friends who become her chosen family. Together they party, argue, fall in love, make mistakes, support one another and build a world where they can exist freely until a mysterious illness begins to take hold.
When the HIV/AIDS epidemic was officially recognised in June 1981, fear and confusion swept through queer communities. With no treatments available and society responding with panic, stigma and discrimination, Billie watches helplessly as her friends become sick and, one by one, die.
The narrative moves between Billie’s youth and her later life, where she attempts to put decades of memories into words. The contrast between the joy of queer liberation and the devastation that followed gives the novel its emotional weight.
Wilkes excels at creating deeply human characters. Billie, Laura, Robert, Ted, Dave, Aggie, Sasha and Tolstoy all feel fully realised, with dreams, flaws, ambitions and hope. I particularly enjoyed Billie and Laura’s relationship; Their bond begins as an intense childhood friendship and evolves into something more complicated and profound. It adds enormous emotional depth to the story and anchors Billie’s journey.
The book is beautifully written and emotionally immersive. I found myself deeply attached to Billie and her circle of friends, and I appreciated how Wilkes emphasises the importance of friendship as one of the novel’s greatest strengths. These characters were so much more than the illness that claimed so many of their lives.
Wilkes’ background as a researcher and educator is evident in her handling of the historical context. Her portrayal of the AIDS crisis is grounded in lived experience and community memory. The illness is depicted as frightening, messy, and confronting, yet the story never becomes solely about suffering. It honours joy, love, resilience and the everyday humanity of those who lived through the epidemic.
I Remember Everything is a powerful tribute to a generation of queer people and to the friendships and communities that carried one another through one of the darkest periods in LGBTQIA+ history. It is not simply a novel about AIDS; it is a story about how people lived, who they loved, and what it means to remember those who were lost.
This novel lingers long after the final page. I finished it feeling immense sadness for the lives cut short, but also gratitude for the reminder that remembering someone is a way of keeping them alive. For readers who weren’t alive during the height of the AIDS epidemic, it offers a vital and compassionate window into what that era meant for queer communities.
I highly recommend it to readers who enjoy character-driven stories exploring friendship, love and loss.
A selection of our Beauty and Lace Club members are reading I Remember Everything by Fiona Wilkes. You can read their comments below, or add your own review.
My love of books started at a very young age. My mum has always been a reader and encouraged me to read, buying me endless book from classic fairy tales advancing to the world of Enid Blyton, CS Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Kathryn Kenny, Carolyn Keene, Francine Pascal. In my adult years the list of authors is endless and every room in my house is filled with books.
One of my favourite novels is Narnia which has always has a special place in my heart. I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 1978 and when I was given this book to read it let me escape to another world where I felt like I was in the book with all the characters, it wasfun and exciting to escape from reality and eased the ups and downs of the disease at such a young age.
In books nothing is impossible and there is endless potential and hundreds of places to explore or being taken to places that are only made up from the authors’ great minds, the past and future to navigate, characters lives you step into taking you on an emotional rollercoaster ride or being scared out of your wits. I can experience things that I can’t in real life because they’re not possible or real. It challenges my perspective and mindset expanding my worldview.
I find joy, comfort and peace with books, many people may not get it, but I know bookworms like me truly understand. Reading makes my heart happy.
Thanks Beauty and Lace for the opportunity to read Fiona Wilkes novel I Remember Everything.
This reads as a memoir of Billie – in 1979 she heads off to university with her best friend Laura not realising that they are both gay – they soon realise they are and make life long friendships within the gay community at Uni – relationships come and go but their core friendship group remains together – then the 80’s hit and It (HIV) rears its ugly head and slowly It infiltrates their close knit circle.
Billie and Laura’s friendship/relationship has its ups and downs but they also find their way back to each other.
Billie is now writing her memoir during another tragic time (Covid) whilst her wife is a nurse and they have an 18 year old son discovering his sexuality.
I really enjoyed this book and truly felt for the characters and the sadness that claimed so many lives during both these times. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I Remember Everything by Fiona Wilkes
This book stayed with me long after I finished it. It opens in 1979 with Billie and her best friend Laura heading off to Bristol for university, full of hope and ready to make the most of it. From there it follows Billie through her twenties as she comes out, moves to London, and builds a fiercely loyal group of chosen family Robert, Tolstoy ,Eleanor, Sasha, Aggie, and Ted . But Laura is the one person Billie can’t live without.
The parties, the found family, the freedom of finally being able to exist as themselves As the AIDS epidemic takes hold through the 1980s, Billie watches her friends fall ill one by one. The chapters where she cares for Laura are some of the most upsetting piece of writing in the book .Billie is writing all this down thirty years later in a memoir ,its 2020 during COVID, trying to explain to her wife and teenage child why it matters so much to remember these horible pandemics.
The book digs into the loss and tragedy of her younger years
There is alot of confronting scenes about homophobia, transphobia, violence, illness, drug use suicide and grief which are all handled honestly. The book was shortlisted for the Hungerford Award and it’s easy to see why.
Thankyou Beauty and Lace even though the book was confronting and sad I still enjoyed reading.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read “I Remember Everything” by Fiona Wilkes. It was a different type of book to those I usually choose but I thought it was excellent.
The story revolves around Billie and Laura who go off to university and discover they both have lesbian tendencies. They meet other people of the same persuasion.
Then “It” (Aids) arrives to put the fear into the whole group. One by one they become infected and pass away.
Billie relates this part of her life with empathy and truth.
This novel covers familiar subject matter, and could easily have felt like something I’d read before. Instead it’s elevated by genuine emotion, and a sympathetic narrator who draws you in quickly and thoroughly.
In many ways, the plot of this story was familiar. However, the extent to which Billie was embedded in the gay community, and extraordinary scale of the impact on her small group of friends was unusual in my fiction reading. What really makes this novel stand out is the emotion.
Wilkes draws us into Billie’s emotional life. We experience the joy of being young, of finding others like you, of finding friends and lovers. We understand her pain at having others condemn something that is a basic, instinctual part of her. And then too, we’re forced to experience her terror and sorrow as a dreadful disease emerges and shatters lives and community. And later, we understand both why Billie is driven to write of them, and why it is so hard.
I was younger than Billie, but I too recall the way the AIDS epidemic was slowly identified, categorised, and demonised. Wilkes paints this part of the novel with a vividness that will strike a nerve with anyone who remembers the news reports of the time. Whether you were in a high risk category or not, it was presented as terrifying.
It’s hard to say I enjoyed this novel; its’ major themes include death, loss, discrimination, and prejudice. And yet I did. Wilkes brings a time, a place, and a cast of characters vividly to life and makes you feel it all.
The novel doesn’t flinch from difficult issues, but above all I felt that it was about humanity. What we share, what we rob both ourselves and others of when we see only difference, and what we all want – love.
I will not forget this novel easily.