We Can Be Heroes: A Survivor’s Story

Welsh journalist Burston (The Closer I Get) provides a fast-moving play-by-play of his fight to create space for London’s gay community amid the AIDS epidemic and beyond. After starting with ACT UP London in 1989, Burston was involved in the development of other gay rights organizations including OutRage! and GALOP. As queer publications lost key writers and editors to AIDS, Burston pivoted from activism to journalism to fill the vacancies. Recounting his life and career, he offers a dizzying array of sometimes hilarious, sometimes devastating anecdotes, from “literally charging at” David Bowie at a party, to accidentally overdosing on a cocktail of cocaine, ecstacy, and other substances and flatlining, to “doing the unthinkable” and getting married. Despite Burston’s natural skill as a raconteur, the memoir moves too quickly, and the crushes, professional contacts, and celebrity encounters are so plentiful that few manage to stand out. Even when close friends die of AIDS or Burston reckons with his years of hard drug use, the musings fly by at such a clip that it discourages readers from soaking up their gravity. This sped-up recollection of a remarkable life sacrifices emotion for urgency. Agent: David Headley, DHH Literary. (June)