SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A NEW YORK TIMES Selection for BEST 10 BOOKS OF THE YEARA WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK A PICK FOR THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY’S 2018 BEST BOOKSTHE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT FOR READERS“A page turner…An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis. “—The New York Times Book Review A dazzling new novel of … New York Times Book Review
A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed author Rebecca Makkai
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister.
Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.
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A time in history and wonderful characters you’ll not quickly forget.
I had not read a novel about the AIDS epidemic of the 80’s before. This novel had characters that were easy to identify with and care about. The plot line was unfortunately only too easy to guess – it was, after all, an incurable disease then – but it still kept me turning pages right through to the end. I recommend it.
This book transitioned beautifully between two time periods, and I was emotionally invested in both. Each chapter switched back and forth from mid-1980s to 2015. Not once was I disappointed. I fell in love with these characters, wishing to call them friends. And as I raced through the reading, I was saddened to know this book would eventually end. Anyone who happens upon The Great Believers is in for a bittersweet treat.
I loved this book!
Epigraphs (in case you wonder where the title came from):
“We were the great believers. I have never cared for any men as much as for these who felt the first springs when I did, and saw death ahead, and were reprieved—and who now walk the long stormy summer.” F. Scott Fitgerald
“The world is a wonder, but the portions are small.” Rebecca Hazelton
I listened to the Audible edition, beautifully narrated by Michael Crouch. When I downloaded the novel, I realized the audiobook was over 18 hours. Eighteen hours! Sheesh!
There’s a quote in the latter portion of the book about life being at once too long and too short. That was this novel too, at least for me. In the beginning, the book’s length was daunting. Slowly, I became more and more invested in Fiona and Yale—especially Yale!—and the rest of the characters. Then I settled into the story, as one settles in to life. By the end, everyone’s stories were over too quickly.
Rebecca Makkai brilliantly parallels a group of Chicagoans devastated by the AIDS outbreak of the 1980s with the Great War’s lost generation. This is a novel about ordinary people—people who just want to be happy—finding themselves in a life and death struggle they did not ask for against an enemy they don’t understand. It’s about the heartbreak of watching beloved friends and fellows fall on the right hand and the left, and being powerless to stop it.
As I write this review, it’s been a couple of months since I finished the book. I listened to the last chapter again. Because that’s where the loss is driven home. That’s where Makkai pushes her reader’s empathy to a peak.
And that’s when I added The Great Believers to my favorites shelf.
This really is a “Great Book” – ambitious, epic and telling a chapter of history, while also being a solid story on the individual level.
4.5 stars. A really good read. A powerful portrayal of life in the gay community in Chicago at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s, capturing the fear and powerlessness as one by one friends and lovers are struck done by the terrible disease. Homophobia was rampant, and the Reagan administration would not even acknowledge the existence of the epidemic, so the fight became political. There were no effective medications and the newly introduced blood test was controversial: to take it or not was the question, and the community was divided. The novel opens with a memorial gathering for Nico, who has just died, one of the first to go, leaving his friend Yale and his sister Fiona bereft. Makkai deftly handles a large cast of characters and a complex plot which keeps the reader fully engaged, turning the pages for more. The chapters set in the 1980’s are interspersed with a contemporary story in which Fiona arrives in Paris, in the search for her adult daughter from whom she has been estranged for several years. The two narratives weave closer together as the novel progresses. Both stories are very engaging, and it sometimes felt disruptive to be thrown out of one in order to return to the other. Makkai also has a tendency to overdo the use of flashbacks, which throws the reader out of the forward-moving action. But overall, a wonderful novel, both for readers who remember those times, and those who do not.
The Great Believers
It is a strange feeling to read your own past as history. The Great Believers, set in the late 1980s and in 2015, helped me understand what actually happened to the gay community at the height of the AIDs crisis, when President Reagan and the nation turned their collective backs on the hundreds of thousands of dying men simply because of homophobic prejudice. Looking back through the eyes of Makkai’s sympathetic and complex characters made me see what I missed— it wasn’t just about a disease; it was about a community that gained strength even as its members were ill or dying. I lost friends, I lost acquaintances, we all lost the creative energy the newly liberated gay community was bringing to this nation in the decade after Stonewall. Makkai’s book helped me feel what it was like to be surrounded by comrades, lovers, co-creators and then to have them die one after another, decimating the community, leaving survivors lost and lonely, wondering when it was their time to fall to this horrendous scourge they had witnessed over and over.
The book takes place in two time-settings, 1980s Chicago and 2015 Paris. The Chicago sections were definitely my favorite parts, though I see that the contemporary parts were a good way to show how life has changed since those days when being HIV positive was a death sentence. And how grief still clings to those who made it through to the other side.
A moving book that shows us how historical fiction can change our view of history, even the history we have lived through ourselves.
Rebecca Makkai has recreated an age I lived through but had put to the back of my mind. The scourge of AIDs erupted I the gay community just as Gay pride began to emerge as a force for good and change. Men and women were coming out of the closet, dancing in parades, publishing alternative newspapers, claiming their rights to live openly in a completely homophobic society. Makkai, who was only achild during the events she writes about, shows us the joy of that moment on history and then the rapid disintegration of networks, communities and individual lives as this disease took hold and our government under Reagan stood by and did nothing while thousands and thouands of people died. Her research is deep and impeccable, the plot, which weaves in out of three periods of history is capitvating. But it is her characters that really make this novel a heart-stopper. This is a book that needed to be written and now needs to be read as millions still live with HIV while our government under Trump cuts funding needed to end this disease once and for all
I said on Goodreads that this one of the best books I’ve read. Ever. It’s so engrossing and moving and beautifully written. And those characters! If I were teaching a course on the 80s I would require it. Or about HIV/AIDS.
But the majesty of this book is that though the plot is irresistible it’s the people, and their trauma, leeching into future generations, that governs. It is simply a loving, aching, beautiful gift.
Gorgeous writing. Incredible characters. Haunting, tragic, beautiful.
Be ready! This is a novel that will fully immerse you into the terror of the AIDS epidemic of the mid 1980s — a time when every diagnosis spelled death and the surrounding world was full of misinformation about how the disease spread. Part of the book follows a group of people living in the midst of this chaos and another part picks some of them up again a generation later.
In 1985, the gay community of Chicago is still mostly hiding out in gay bars and bath houses and just beginning to observe the randomness with which AIDS strikes. Nico has just died and his sister Fiona and all his friends (Yale the art gallery fundraiser, Charlie the gay magazine editor, Asher the activist attorney, Richard the photographer, and others) are all grieving the loss of this one wonderful young man. During the next few years, as more and more people get diagnosed, we all watch as this community, its surrounding society, and its healthcare providers and insurance companies are forced to address the growing epidemic, in part, in response to growing activism from the gay community.
In 2015, a mid-fifties Fiona has hired a private detective to locate her estranged daughter Claire, who may now be living in Paris. A retrospective exhibit of Richard’s photos is about to open, also in Paris. And if you remember your history, 2015 is also the year of the terrorist attack at the Bataclan concert hall and other locations in Paris.
So, needless to say, there’s a lot of drama in this novel. And since the narrative moves back and forth in time, there are a lot of characters and storylines to keep track of. But along the way, you’ll learn a bit about acquisitions in the gallery world, a great deal about different kinds of love, and some about the long-lasting legacy left by a disease that took so many at such a young age.
Rebecca Makkai captures the heart of Chicago in the mid-80’s during the AIDS crisis. Her characters are flawed and complex and the book serves as both a reminder of what we lost and a testament to those who fought and persevered through those heart-breaking years.
Read at the start of the year and it’s still with me. An unflinching look at the AIDS crisis and its legacy, set in 1980s Chicago and modern-day Paris. Fully realised characters, a world that feels tangible, and complex relationships that leave you changed just by witnessing them.
One of the best and most beloved main characters ever. Read it & see for yourself.
Beautifully written, haunting. About the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s. You want to be there with the characters to help them.
My fave for 2018! 😀
A very sad time in out recent history that has been brought to life by this very wonderful book. Great characters. Again recommended to my reading friends and they always read what I recommend
Couldn’t put it down!
This is the best book I have read in the last year.