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The Great Believers

Rebecca Makkai (Goodreads Author)

4.22 · Rating details · 79,879 ratings · 7,592 reviews

A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris

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 carnag ...more

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Paperback, 421 pages

Published June 4th 2019 by Penguin Group (first published June 19th 2018)

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Feb 04, 2018 Rebecca Makkai rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author) · review of another edition

Only giving this five stars because I'm married to the author's husband. ...more

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Feb 25, 2018 Dan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In a weird way, I feel that this is the sweeping gay masterpiece that A Little Life should’ve been. It’s a nice long read about a close-knit group of gay friends and their straight allies that jumps back and forth between the height of the AIDS crisis in Chicago and present day Paris. Makkai does a pretty clever thing here by drawing parallels between the Lost Generation from WWI and survivors of the AIDS crisis. Ordinarily, when I read books that go back and forth between two narrators I tend t ...more

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Feb 17, 2019 Richard Derus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed, returned, pearl-ruled

DNF @ p.148

What, I hear you thinking, is wrong with this old man? DNF a five-star read? Five-star a DNF? ::side-eye::

The fact is that I lived this story. I lost the love of my life to AIDS, and attended far too many funerals and memorial services before I was 30. So I really just can't finish the book. I am not up for those wounding memories to be poked with a stick.

The prose is exemplary in its economy and precision, both qualities I admire greatly. Yale came fully into his manhood for me when, ...more

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Jun 28, 2020 Kat rated it liked it

*vague thumbs up*

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Jun 30, 2018 Larry H rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I'm between 3.5 and 4 stars, rounding up.

At the start of The Great Believers , Rebecca Makkai's beautifully poignant yet meandering new novel, it is 1985, and Yale Tishman and his partner, Charlie, are preparing for the memorial service for Nico, a friend who has recently died of AIDS.

The gay community in Chicago where they live has been devastated by this recently discovered disease, as have gay communities across the country. The sense of loss they feel is just beginning to hit them, as the ...more

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Jun 01, 2019 Chris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I read this novel when it was first published in 2018 and I was gobsmacked by how spectacular every moment was -- and by the rich panorama Rebecca Makkah created of Chicago in the 1980s and Paris in 2015.

I was so enamored with it and I missed the characters so much that last month I bought the audiobook so I could experience it once again.

And I loved it even more. Michael Crouch's narration is spectacular: so many voices, all distinct, and he captured beautifully the rhythms of Makkah's prose -- ...more

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May 27, 2018 Roman Clodia rated it it was ok · review of another edition

There’s an important story here (at least in the 1985 strand) as AIDS cuts through the Chicago gay community – but something about Makkai’s style left me feeling mostly disengaged from it in emotional terms. Sure, I had moments of anger as we witness a dead man’s parents exclude his lover from the funeral, the horrible voyeurism that makes a thing of a man being gay, black, whatever. But overall I was never able to get involved or attached to what is going on.

Add to the style a baggy structure t ...more

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Mar 11, 2018 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4.5 The story opens with the death of a young gay man, named Nico. Disowned by this family for his sexual preference, that is all but his younger sister, Fiona, who is with him until the end. This is her introduction into the gay community, a community that will embrace her as she embraces them. It is the eighties in Chicago, Boys town and the AIDS epidemic is in full swing. We meet many of these young men, so many whose families have cut them loose. See their fear, their sorrow as more die, or 4.5 The story opens with the death of a young gay man, named Nico. Disowned by this family for his sexual preference, that is all but his younger sister, Fiona, who is with him until the end. This is her introduction into the gay community, a community that will embrace her as she embraces them. It is the eighties in Chicago, Boys town and the AIDS epidemic is in full swing. We meet many of these young men, so many whose families have cut them loose. See their fear, their sorrow as more die, or find out they have the virus. Fiona, is with many of them, caring for them when they cannot care for themselves. I can't imagine watching everyone you love die, and we see how this affects Fiona in her life a dual story line with the second in 2015 as Fiona searches for her own grown daughter. She finds Richard, a photographer, a survivor from the eighties, and there will be another to survive, a total surprise.. Reminded me a little of A Little Life, the scope, the friends, losing so much.

Maybe because it was set in Chicago, all places I've been, so could imagine this story visually.Belmont Rocks, Lincoln Park and the zoo, Halsted, and Ann Sathers restaurant, one of my favorites in the city. In the Seventies, I hung in Old Town with a group of friends, two were gay, a couple, Jimmy and Max, they were wonderful, don't know what happened to them. I got married, had children, lost touch. I loved this novel, could fully embrace and connect with the story, a story that takes the reader fully into this time period. The political ramifications of a government that was totally unconcerned, a public that turned their heads since this only affected gays, which proved not to be true. The insurance companies, and the way they fought not to pay claims, citing preexisting conditions, so that many died in Cook County hospital. Families, who cut their children off, many never speaking to them again.

We see the other side too, friends banding together, trying to be there for those who had nobody. A mother who stays with her son through this terrible time. So many of these characters we come to know intimately, especially Yale, who is our narrator along with Fiona. Their is a secondary plot in the eighties that concerns Fiona's aunt and some valuable artwork. It was a little drawn out but it does tie into the story and is something Yale is determined to complete. Yale's sees it as a honor to a love that never stopped. Northwestern and DePaul, places Yale works, DePaul a school my youngest daughter graduated from, know it well.

In the present Richard and his photographic exhibit will bring the novel full circle, giving the many who had died, once again a voice. Merging the past with the present.

This was Angela, Esil and my read for March. I liked this one more than they, found it both profound, touching and a story that needed to be told.

ARC from Edelweiss. ...more

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Oct 13, 2018 Michael rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018

Alternating between present-day Paris and '80s Chicago, The Great Believers explores the impact and aftermath of the AIDS epidemic on a close-knit group of friends living in Boystown. The novel tells three stories, through two perspectives. In the main plot, Yale Tishman struggles to cope with the illness and loss of his friends, and placate a jealous partner who fears Yale will leave him after the epidemic ends; all the while, Yale, the development director for an art gallery, tries to acquire ...more

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Mar 09, 2018 Angela M rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: edelweiss-reviews

The Great Believers

3.5 stars rounded up

1980s Chicago, the devastating AIDS epidemic seen through the eyes of a group of gay friends as they slowly lose so many in their circle of friends, reflects the time in a realistic way . Fiona who has lost her loving brother and many of their friends over the years travels in to Paris in 2015, connecting with Richard an old friend from those times, as she searches for her daughter and the grandchild she has not met. The chapters alternate between these t ...more

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Mar 20, 2018 Emily May rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, arc, 2018

I found The Great Believers really dry and boring. It's about the AIDs epidemic and a group of gay friends, split between 1985 and 2015, and yet this subject that should have been deeply emotional left me cold. I didn't care for the characters and there were huge chunks that could have (and should have) been cut out.

The Heart's Invisible Furies and The House of Impossible Beauties also look at this time period and do a much better job of it, in my opinion. Each have more interesting characters, ...more

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Mar 08, 2018 switterbug (Betsey) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

When my best friend, Wade, died of complications of the AIDS virus in 1992, I was devastated and broken. If it weren’t for my fiancé (now husband), I may have spiraled into a dark, depressing space for a long time. Makkai’s book brought it all back to me—the despair, the secrets, and the shame that was forced upon my friend from the virus and the politics of the time. Even though the locale (Chicago/Paris) in Makkai’s novel is different than my own, and the plot of course sprang from the depth o When my best friend, Wade, died of complications of the AIDS virus in 1992, I was devastated and broken. If it weren’t for my fiancé (now husband), I may have spiraled into a dark, depressing space for a long time. Makkai’s book brought it all back to me—the despair, the secrets, and the shame that was forced upon my friend from the virus and the politics of the time. Even though the locale (Chicago/Paris) in Makkai’s novel is different than my own, and the plot of course sprang from the depth of her imagination, she captured the emotions and momentum of the time so well that I often twinned with the author’s story. Character-driven, theme-driven, and generous of spirit, The Great Believers is a fully realized work of art.

The novel threads two timelines—the 80s/90s AIDS epidemic era and 2015. We follow Fiona in both timelines, first a heartsick nineteen-year-old sister in the 80s and subsequently a mother estranged from her adult daughter in 2015. She never stopped grieving for her brother, Nico, for his untimely death from AIDS in 1985. The effect it had on her, while she stood by all who came after-- Nico’s boyfriend and friends and friends of friends who succumbed, left her so consumed and damaged that she never felt whole again. She couldn’t sustain a marriage, and motherhood was fraught with mistakes.

In the 1980s, Yale, a development director of an art gallery, is about to pull off the collection of his dreams, just as he finds out his boyfriend has cheated on him and is carrying the virus, which now means possible doom for Yale, too. He decides to focus on his work to escape his pain.

Nora, the elderly woman donating the 1920s pieces, seems a far cry from Yale and his personal problems, yet her romantic nature and story of loss—all her friends that died or disappeared in Europe during the Great War—resonates to the monumental losses of people dying from the virus. The urgency and sorrow are wrapped up in the wreckage. Many during the war were ravaged, sick from the flu epidemic, dead, or grieving alone. And in the era of AIDS, as Nora says, “I don’t know how you can compare it to anything else…I don’t know how it’s like anything other than war!”

And Nora still hasn’t gotten over her great love, Ranko, an obscure artist who painted some of the pieces that she is about to offer. He died over sixty years ago, but he’s alive in her heart. She trusts Yale to preserve and display her collection.

Fiona, on a tip, flies from Chicago to Paris to hopefully find her daughter, Claire, who she suspects now has a daughter of her own. So many years of embittered anguish--the misunderstandings, mischaracterized actions, conflicts, have damaged them both. Fiona’s inability to recover from Nico’s death left her heart torn, like Nora’s when Ranko died. As one character says, when asked if love vanishes, “I think that’s the saddest thing in the world, the failure of love. Not hatred, but the failure of love.”

The Great Believers delivers a sprawling cast of characters. The majority of them—even secondary and tertiary characters, have singular features that give them dimension. The past informs the present and quietly, through love, memories, and friendship, they open a window to redemption. And art. Makkai has a knack for penning each book so differently, and yet her theme of redemption through art is a bright beam that radiates like an eternal flame of hope and healing. Read it and weep! ...more

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Jul 12, 2018 Jessica Jeffers rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fiction

"But what a burden, to be Horatio. To be the one with the memory."
Like many others of a certain age who are fans of musical theater, I went through a phase in my late teens and early twenties where I thought Rent was the most amazing piece of art ever created. A lot about the show hasn’t aged well—just pay your rent, guys—but it’s still a moving remembrance of a very particular time and place: New York during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s

One of my favorite lines in the show isn’t one that
"But what a burden, to be Horatio. To be the one with the memory."
Like many others of a certain age who are fans of musical theater, I went through a phase in my late teens and early twenties where I thought Rent was the most amazing piece of art ever created. A lot about the show hasn’t aged well—just pay your rent, guys—but it’s still a moving remembrance of a very particular time and place: New York during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s

One of my favorite lines in the show isn’t one that I think a lot of others would cite. It’s not funny, it’s not romantic, it’s not empowering. It got cut out of the movie adaptation (and I could write a long, long paper about why that was a bad move), but it’s when Roger, preparing to move to Santa Fe, angrily tells Mark, “You pretend to create and observe when you really detach from being alive.” Mark’s response to him sums up everything you need to know about his role in the story: “Perhaps that’s because I’m the one of us to survive.” It’s a brilliant, brutal, beautiful line, for so many reasons

Having been too young and too far removed from the AIDS epidemic, it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to watch huge portions of your community become sick and die of this disease with no treatment options and so much stigma. But there was a different, specific kind of psychological wrinkle that comes with being the Mark Cohen of the group, the one to survive. The one to remember.

And that’s the psychological wrinkle that Rebecca Makkai is exploring in her brilliant, brutal, beautiful novel The Great Believers. Told across two different timelines thirty years apart, Makkai examines the lingering effects of the AIDS epidemic on one group of friends in Chicago. In 1985, Yale Tishman attends a memorial service for his friend Nico, the first among his group to succumb to the disease. Over the next several years, this will become a familiar scene for Yale as more and more of his friends become sick and pass away. The one constant is Nico’s little sister, Fiona, who continues to provide care for Nico’s friends as, one by one, they receive positive tests.

For everyone in the Chicago gay community, there is the lingering question—when will it be me? For Yale, the question is present, certainly, but he feels comforted by the fact that he is in a monogamous relationship with Charlie and, therefore, theoretically, at a much lower risk of contracting HIV. Meanwhile, he distracts himself from his grief by focusing his attentions on his work. As the development director for an up-and-coming art gallery, Yale is trying to secure a bequest from Fiona’s great aunt, who spent her youth in Paris mingling with artists. Now she wants to leave the works those men left behind to Yale’s gallery, much to the horror of her family.

In 2015, Fiona is a middle-aged woman who has come to Paris to search for Claire, the adult daughter from whom she is estranged. She and Claire have had a fraught relationship since her daughter was young and Fiona had an affair with another man that ended her marriage to Claire’s father. When Claire was a teenager, she ran away with a man fifteen years her senior and ended up in a cult. She has since left the cult, but hasn’t been in touch with her mother, and Fiona is desperate to make amends.

Though much of the 1980s narration focuses on Yale, this is ultimately Fiona’s story. She’s the one who, in the present-day, bears the brunt of the psychological scarring that comes from being, as Mark Cohen put it in Rent, the one to survive. As we learn more about her relationship with Claire and why it fell apart, we see how much it was related to the pain that Fiona experienced watching her brother and so many of his friends in the gay community die.

As you can imagine, this book is absolutely heartbreaking. I started sobbing on page 334 (the start of one of the most heart-wrenching chapters I’ve read in years) and I did not stop until after I hit the final page, 418. As Yale struggles to acquire the art for the exhibition, as he watches the people around him receive diagnoses, grow sick, and die, as Fiona puts her life on hold to care for her brother’s friends, as she struggles to understand the source of her daughter’s resentments, as we wend into the final scene, at a different art exhibition thirty years after Yale’s, a scene that also beautifully called to mind the ending of Rent, there is so much pain and sadness and loss in this book.

And yet, it never felt emotionally manipulative to me. It never felt sad just for the sake of being sad. It really forced me to consider what it must have been like to live through this awful experience that so many people—and especially gay men—lived through within my lifetime. The writing can be a little overly literary in some spots and it moves a little slowly in the beginning. But it's still so incredibly well done and I want to make everyone I know read it.

Guys, read this book. It has a lot of buzz, but it's deserved. This will almost certainly end up at the top of my own Best of 2018 list. I can't recommend it enough. ...more

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May 21, 2020 Lori rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

I read Rebecca Makkai's "The Hundred-Year House," gave it one star and described it as "boring" among other things. But I thought she showed promise. This one's about a subject close to my heart and the book was so highly acclaimed I was eager for the right time to come around to read it. Because I volunteered relatively early in the city where I lived, where it hit late, I knew over a hundred people who died of AIDS, only two of whom were born female. When I burnt out after six years of intense I read Rebecca Makkai's "The Hundred-Year House," gave it one star and described it as "boring" among other things. But I thought she showed promise. This one's about a subject close to my heart and the book was so highly acclaimed I was eager for the right time to come around to read it. Because I volunteered relatively early in the city where I lived, where it hit late, I knew over a hundred people who died of AIDS, only two of whom were born female. When I burnt out after six years of intense volunteering, I left with a heavy heart. I met so many wonderful people I never would have known. It's a cliche but true: I got so much more than I gave. At the time I had a great life for which I was very grateful, and it was a privilege to give of myself to this group of victims who truly WERE victims of Reagan's inaction but didn't want to be called that; they insisted, rather, on People With AIDS. They were a remarkable, eclectic community full of sick and dying people and HIV-positive people, many witty and wonderful, some angry and bitter but that was okay too, and most were not. It was a trip, and unforgettable. In time some personal friends became sick and died too. No one's path was like any other's. That's what I expected to encounter memorialized within these pages, but I didn't find it.

Makkai's created community of gay people in mid-'80s Chicago are a joyless bunch, defined by their jobs and disease or HIV status, lacking personality and vitality. It seems like the most fun person is the one whose memorial begins the book, but I suspect had he lived he'd have been reduced to rote dialogue and cliche interactions as well. Makkai tells us they're living with and dying of AIDS or living in fear of it or affected by it, they're working and partying and advocating -- but they lack personality and they're not having any fun. We're told about fun but never see it.

It's the same with the tie-in, via the main character, to the school and scene of Beaux Arts painting in the late 1800s and again in the 1910s and '20s. The main character is in the process of obtaining a valuable collection from a woman who was in Paris hanging with many artists, some of the great ones, at the time. She has stories, she has paintings, sketches, she called Modigliani by his nickname "Modi" (a nickname that had an interesting meaning which Makkai never explains). This woman lived through exciting times in art, knew some wonderful artists, she painted and she posed, socialized with some and deeply loved one. Her story should have been riveting to me. Instead, as she relates it, it's as silly and unbelievable and as wasted an opportunity as the old woman's story James Cameron chose for his beloved and ridiculously absurd and dishonest film "Titanic." The real stories of Titanic are fascinating. And so should have been that of the old woman in the book, but her tale too is not credible and lacks immediacy, eroticism and...art.

There's a second storyline in a timeline thirty years later having to do with the sister of the man whose memorial opens the book. She's a relative of the old woman too. She's in Paris trying to find her daughter who joined a cult and broke contact with her. This 2015 story is dull and as written, not at all believable. Like the main tale in 1985, it could have been compelling but wasn't. The characters in 2015 Paris are just more characters who all speak alike and aren't interesting.

A single timeline would have been better, a chance to get to know the group in 1985 better, differentiate them, care about them, march with them, get invested. These characters are not at all lifelike. The people I knew, the sick and the dying and the worried well, well not everyone with everything to lose loses their vitality, their sense of humor or love of life. In my experience the certainty of imminent or certain death heightened the life force in some people, which never happens in this book. It's as if Makkai wrote from a menu: this one is afraid of getting infected, this one is infecting people because he couldn't care less, that one is about to die, this one's an activist, those ones artistic, that one's this and that one's that -- but she forgot to write in emotion and humanity. The Beaux Arts piece could have been folded in nicely too had it been written well.

Three wasted opportunities. A boatload of characters mostly indistinguishable or reduced to a few traits, who all speak with the same sentence structure. Not one entirely healthy family relationship out of all the characters. The deep fear and sorrow before there were AIDS treatments isn't in these pages nor is the beautiful spirit of so many who died. Supposedly some of this is based on real people and events in Chicago. I'm glad I was elsewhere and knew real loving, funny, nasty, angry, emotional, and yes a handful of apathetic -- DIVERSE -- people. I won't be reading Makkai again. This boring book did me good in one way only: it brought to mind many real people I knew, some I'd forgotten about, brought some back to mind very vividly, as if they were intentionally writing over Makkai's work. ...more

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Sep 05, 2018 Meike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-nba, 2018-read, usa

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 Finalist
Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Fiction
A global crisis that has taken the lives of 35,4 million people, changing the face of the world forever - no, this is not a dystopia, Rebecca Makkai wrote the Great American Novel about the beginning of the AIDS epidemic (which is ongoing; here's the latest data: http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fa...). The author introduces us to a circle of friends in mid-80's Chicago, many of them gay, and shows how HIV/AIDS imp Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 Finalist
Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Fiction
A global crisis that has taken the lives of 35,4 million people, changing the face of the world forever - no, this is not a dystopia, Rebecca Makkai wrote the Great American Novel about the beginning of the AIDS epidemic (which is ongoing; here's the latest data: http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fa...). The author introduces us to a circle of friends in mid-80's Chicago, many of them gay, and shows how HIV/AIDS impacts their lives. What makes this book particularly shocking is that it starts rather slow, but pretty quickly it becomes clear that what propels the story forward is the question who will die next - and as Makkai's characters are brilliantly drawn, psychologically covincing and vivid, it is heart-wrenching to read about their destinies. This main narrative is intersected with a second storyline that takes us and some of the surviving protagonists to Paris in 2010, thus showing how the past is never over and the dead never really vanish, which can be both consoling and haunting.

Makkai's main character is Yale Tishman, a 31-year-old gay man who works at Northwestern's Brigg Gallery. His partner Charlie is the editor-in-chief of a gay magazine and an activist. When their friend Nico dies of AIDS, Yale is devastated, but still feels like he is safe from the disease. Soon though, the epidemic starts to ravage their circle of friends and Yale finds himself at the centre of a deadly storm.

Throughout her novel, Makkai touches on many topics: There's the spread of fear that erodes human relationships ("You get afraid of one thing, and suddenly you're afrid of everything"), the questions of blame and guilt, the judgement and the stigma. There's also the disillusionment that comes with the fact that the AIDS crisis started when the gay community finally saw a window of opportunity in the fight for equal rights ("I thought it was the beginning of something. When it really was the end.").

I particularly admired how Makkai manages to convey the enduring consequences of trauma and loss: Nico's grandmother Nora was part of the Lost Generation, and she used to be an artist and the muse of famous painters in Paris. Regarding her memory of those artists who died in or as a consequence of the war and could never develop their full potential, she remarks: "Every time I've gone to the gallery, the rest of my life, I've thought about the works that werent't there. Shadow-paintings, you know, that no one can see but you."

The theme of ghosts is recurring throughout the novel, and the survivors of the beginning of the AIDS crisis - infected or not - are also a kind of lost generation, forced to deal with the memory of their friends who died gruesome deaths, and their own inability to help them. Makkai makes a point to also refer to 9/11 and the Bataclan attacks, large-scale events that fundamentally changed individual lives. The repercussions of such traumatic incidents are carried over generations: While Yale, who is Jewish, is named after his aunt Yael, Nico's sister Fiona names her daughter "Claire Yael", and Claire names her daughter Nicolette, apparently after Nico, the uncle who was taken from her before her birth - the shadows of the dead always remain visible.

One consolation for the characters in the book is art and its ability to preserve, celebrate and commemorate - Nora makes the art work of dead artists visible, and the circle of friends from Chicago is immortalized by their surviving friend Richard, a photographer. And his photos are not the only place where they live on, because the human heart is "a palimpsest (...), the way things could be written over but never erased." ...more

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Mar 11, 2018 Esil rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ew

3.5 stars

I really loved the themes running through The Great Believers, but I was a little less enthusiastic about the delivery.

The story is told in two timelines. The first timeline runs from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, and it is focused on a group of characters affected by the AIDS epidemic in Chicago. The story is told from Yale’s perspective, who is seeing many of his friends getting sick and dying. Much of his story focuses on the breakdown of his relationship and an art show that he is ...more

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Jun 15, 2019 Thomas rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, adult-fiction, lgbtq

A good read that threads two timelines together: one follows a group of gay male friends affected by the AIDS epidemic in 1980s Chicago, the second centers Fiona, a mother searching for her estranged daughter in 2015. Fiona’s brother, a member of that gay group of friends, died as part of the AIDS epidemic and Fiona has carried the grief of his death and the deaths of his friends all her life. Despite its meandering pace, The Great Believers serves as a powerful story about AIDS and how it devas A good read that threads two timelines together: one follows a group of gay male friends affected by the AIDS epidemic in 1980s Chicago, the second centers Fiona, a mother searching for her estranged daughter in 2015. Fiona’s brother, a member of that gay group of friends, died as part of the AIDS epidemic and Fiona has carried the grief of his death and the deaths of his friends all her life. Despite its meandering pace, The Great Believers serves as a powerful story about AIDS and how it devastated the lives of gay men and those who cared about them.

I found Yale and his friends’ perspectives the most compelling throughout the novel. As a gay man who has grown up in an era with more preventative care, treatment options, and overall awareness of HIV and AIDS, sometimes I take for granted the work of the activists who came before me to make my life so much more bearable. Rebecca Makkai does a great job of capturing the consequences of the administration that ignored queer people’s need for healthcare and as a result buried many of us alive. Instead of presenting a one-sided image of these gay men, she imbues their relationships with complexity. I appreciated the snippets of Yale’s emotional experiences, like his heartbreak and anger at Charlie, his neediness and insecurity that manifested with Roman, as well as that relationship that could have almost been with another character at the end of the book. I most loved the quiet, consistent solidarity between him and Fiona, the power of their friendship throughout so many much suffering and death. As someone who’s estranged from my parents for the most part, I connected a lot with Yale’s reliance and closeness with his friends, his chosen family.

As much as I admired Fiona as a compassionate friend and a three-dimensional character, I felt that her storyline in 2015 did detract from the pacing and power of the 1980s plot. On one hand, not including her 2015 perspective may have made the novel more appropriative, as Makkai identifies as straight. I also feel unsure about whether Yale’s perspective could have carried the whole weight of a novel on its own, even though I liked Yale a lot. On the other hand, Fiona’s whole conflict with her daughter felt secondary and almost unnecessary compared to Yale’s point of view. This issue of pacing and delivery of the story made me feel more lukewarm on The Great Believers on the whole.

Still, a decent read that I hope paves the way for more queer books, especially books written by actual queer people, in particular queer people of color and those at the margins of the queer community. For more adult fiction queer reads, I’d recommend The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihiara, and The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara. ...more

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Sep 27, 2018 Jaclyn Crupi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

We get the day off to stay in bed and read big, brave and beautiful books. This is one of the year’s best and explores the realities and legacies of the AIDS epidemic through parallel narratives. It will make you fucking furious and it will instil deep faith in our shared humanity. It’s one of those great American novels that I love SO MUCH! My heart hurts and I feel profoundly altered. HOW CRAZY GOOD IS FICTION!?!? I honestly don’t know how people who don’t read get through this life.

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Nov 22, 2018 Jill rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The carnage of the AIDS epidemic has been often mined by literary writers. Tim Murphy’s Christodora is an excellent example of a haunting novel that captures AIDS devastation and enduring legacy. But Tim Murphy is a white, male New Yorker who reported on HIV/AIDS for 20 years. I wondered: what would Rebecca Makkai, who is a straight Chicagoan and was very young at the height of the epidemic have to add to the wealth of literature already out there?

As it turns out, quite a bit. I was astounded a The carnage of the AIDS epidemic has been often mined by literary writers. Tim Murphy’s Christodora is an excellent example of a haunting novel that captures AIDS devastation and enduring legacy. But Tim Murphy is a white, male New Yorker who reported on HIV/AIDS for 20 years. I wondered: what would Rebecca Makkai, who is a straight Chicagoan and was very young at the height of the epidemic have to add to the wealth of literature already out there?

As it turns out, quite a bit. I was astounded at the power of this novel and at the emotions I felt towards her characters. The story is told from two time frames: the height of the epidemic in Chicago mid-1980s and 30 years later in Paris. In the first narrative, Yale, a Northwestern University museum fundraising director, is dealing with massive losses of friends to AIDS at the same time he is on the precipice of acquiring an art collection that will propel the reputation of his respected but small museum. In successive chapters, we meet Fiona, the sister of Yale’s friend Nico who dies early in the book, who has never overcome the AIDS holocaust and is trying to locate her estranged daughter.

By focusing on AIDS in the heartland, Rebecca Makkai accomplishes something unique in AIDS literature: takes the focus away from the east and the west coast and showcases how AIDS ravages the smaller gay community in my hometown. For a Chicagoan, the book is particularly revelatory; the long-gone Chicago places of 1985 and 1986 are meticulously resurrected, demonstrating a passion on the author’s part to “get things right.”

The characters – well, the characters could just walk off the pages and the insights are sublime. One of the characters says, “I think that’s the saddest thing in the world, the failure of love. Not hatred, but the failure of love.” By concentrating on the love and connection between characters rather than solely on the tragedy, the horror of the epidemic becomes even more real. When one character whom I had grown to love is found to have the AIDS virus, I shed real tears, feeling the impact of the loss. It takes a really great author to accomplish that in a reader.

Whenever an author attempts to tell dual stories, he or she runs the risk of one overshadowing the other. Indeed, the 1980s narrative is the more compelling. Even so, Rebecca Makkai integrates her themes. In twinning the acquisition of the art collection from an elderly artist’s muse, this is said: “The war made us older than our parents. And when you’re older than your parents, what are you going to do? Who’s going to show you how to live?” Using the metaphor of AIDS as a war, it, too, decimated an entire generation and forced them to live on their own terms. The circle closes in on the Paris excerpts, when we view how the legacy of AIDS has never really left us, despite advances.

I loved this book, which is, ultimately, about the struggle to love and connect amidst the chaos of the height of the AIDS era and in modern times. At a time when many authors are being accused of appropriation, this book should lay to rest that issue; ultimately, it is the voice and the story that matter.

...more

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Oct 26, 2019 Philip rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, author-woman, contemporary, americana, pulitzer, 2018-releases, top-5-2018

5ish stars.

Comparing this book to other recent Pulitzer winners/nominees, it doesn't have the gorgeous, lyrical prose of Imagine Me Gone, the magniloquent wit of Less, or the savage bite of The Sympathizer, but it's pretty perfect in its own way.

I love the two main characters, Asher and Fiona, so much that I got emotional whiplash from how many times I was hopeful for them, anxious, heartbroken, and hopeful all over again. Their stories, taking place in 1980s Chicago and 2015 Paris, are equally ...more

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Jul 03, 2019 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019-favorites

I love this novel. It held me captive from the moment I read the first page until I finished a few days later. Makkai creates the world of a group of gay men - Yale and his friends - so beautifully and with such tenderness that I was caught off guard. Their community in 1980s Chicago is high stakes and concentrated. Every action, every infidelity, might result in death. I knew this novel couldn't end the way I wanted it to. The end is documented history. But I still hoped...

I was not disappointe ...more

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Jul 01, 2019 Nadia rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

Set in Chicago in 1985, The Great Believers offers a gritty depiction of the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s. The story begins with a funeral where a group of gay men are burying one of their friends, the first victim of the epidemic.

The theme reminded me of The Heart's Invisible Furies which is one of my favourite books, but sadly, The Great Believers failed to make the same impression. Although I can appreciate why the book has been so well received and recognised, I personally felt ...more

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Nov 23, 2018 Elyse Walters rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Actress Mary-Louise Parker once said....
“I think that no story is more dramatically
interesting than to see someone fight a battle
that is seemingly
unwinnable”.

The characters in “The Great Believers” were fighting for their lives.
So much hopelessness..so much failure....
LOSS! So much SADNESS!
Friends had perpetrations with each other making it hard to be with ‘the one who was infected with AIDS...while they were ‘the chosen’ with the one who wasn’t.
I remember this period of my life too....
So.. ...more

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Oct 29, 2018 Marchpane rated it liked it · review of another edition

The Great Believers was a mixed bag for me, and I feel I should emphasise upfront that my 3-star rating is not an ‘all-over’ 3, but a result of ‘averaging out’ the excellent bits with the less successful aspects.

The main storyline involves Yale Tishman, his boyfriend Charlie, their social circle, various hangers-on, and the wider gay community in Chicago at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. It’s delicate subject matter but handled with great empathy, sensitivity and insight. The charac The Great Believers was a mixed bag for me, and I feel I should emphasise upfront that my 3-star rating is not an ‘all-over’ 3, but a result of ‘averaging out’ the excellent bits with the less successful aspects.

The main storyline involves Yale Tishman, his boyfriend Charlie, their social circle, various hangers-on, and the wider gay community in Chicago at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. It’s delicate subject matter but handled with great empathy, sensitivity and insight. The characters have depth, the story is compelling and achingly sad. This section is the book’s core.

“If you got it from sleeping with a thousand guys, then it’s a judgment on your promiscuity. If you got it from sleeping with one guy once, that’s almost worse, it’s like a judgment on all of us, like the act itself is the problem and not the number of times you did it. And if you got it because you thought you couldn’t, it’s a judgment on your hubris. And if you got it because you knew you could and you didn’t care, it’s a judgment on how much you hate yourself.”

Two side plots, 100 years apart, both involve art, estrangement and Paris. These weren’t well integrated, and I think there was really only room for one of them. In both strands, much of the plot is conveyed through expository dialogue, so instead of the reader ‘witnessing’ events, we hear characters relating them in conversation. This technique is a bit baffling given there are already multiple timelines involved. Why not have a chapter with Nora in the 1920s? Or Fiona in the 1990s? Overall these side plots were less engaging, seemed rushed in parts, and drew focus away from Yale & Co, diluting the main story’s effect.

Some narrative choices were odd too. One development was loudly telegraphed early on, but not revealed for ages, leaving me impatient for the characters to catch up. Another ‘reveal’ came out of the blue, in a way that felt unearned. Then late in the book, the build up to some key dramatic scenes was undermined by characters mentioning things in conversation before we get to see them unfold, thus robbing them of emotional impact. Simple, linear storytelling would have done the job much better.

These structural complaints really aren’t deal breakers at all - it’s just that the main story is so powerful, it deserved to land with its full emotional weight. Crucially, The Great Believers gets it right when it matters most, and at those moments it is very moving indeed. ...more

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Jul 11, 2019 Pedro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites

Arty, compelling, moving and superbly well written, The Great Believers is an astonishing and unforgettable piece of literature.

It’s 1985 ( I love everything eighties related) and we meet Yale (my favourite male character since Theo from The Goldfinch), his friends, his partner and co-workers at the art gallery. Some really impressive character development in here, believe me.

It’s 2015 and we follow Fiona, one of Yale’s friends from the eighties, searching for her missing daughter for years si ...more

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Mar 29, 2020 Gerhard rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: gay-interest, favorites, 2020

The recent debate about American Dirt and cultural appropriation is one that has been going on for a long time. I think it was for this reason that I put aside reading The Great Believers for so long, as I simply resisted the idea that a ‘bells-and-whistles’ Big Novel about the height of the AIDS crisis in Chicago could be depicted with any degree of accuracy or empathy by a writer not even born at the time.

Yes, I know that is a value judgement in and of itself – actors regularly portray people ...more

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Nov 02, 2018 Jennifer Blankfein rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Follow https://booknationbyjen.wordpress.com for all reviews and recommendations.

Chicago is the third largest city in the US and we rarely associate it with the AIDs epidemic, yet, the city and its people were deeply impacted by the then mysterious and untreatable, deadly disease. Rebecca Makkai set the story, The Great Believers in her beloved hometown and takes us through overwhelmingly emotional times as we witness deep friendships, brotherly camaraderie, romantic and platonic love, unwaverin Follow https://booknationbyjen.wordpress.com for all reviews and recommendations.

Chicago is the third largest city in the US and we rarely associate it with the AIDs epidemic, yet, the city and its people were deeply impacted by the then mysterious and untreatable, deadly disease. Rebecca Makkai set the story, The Great Believers in her beloved hometown and takes us through overwhelmingly emotional times as we witness deep friendships, brotherly camaraderie, romantic and platonic love, unwavering support and devastating depression and loss.

It is 1985 Chicago, and Yale Tishman, the Director of Development at the new art gallery at Northwestern University is working on an exciting and valuable acquisition. His career in the art world is taking off at the same time AIDs has reared its’ ugly head and sadly, Yale loses his best friend Nico. Then, one after another his other friends and acquaintances are getting sick and dying. Yale tries to be a good friend to others as he grapples with his life and this dangerous disease that is making his social circle smaller and smaller. Nico’s loyal younger sister, Fiona is all he has left of his tight little community and they both struggle with the fears they face and the losses they have experienced.

Author Rebecca Makkai alternates back and forth in time and jumping ahead, in 2015, Fiona goes to Paris in search of her daughter, who has run away and joined a cult. Their relationship is estranged and at best strained. During her search, Fiona stays with an artistic friend from her youth who has documented the 1980s AIDs crisis through art and has a show scheduled in Paris during her stay. Time in France gives Fiona opportunity to try and deal with the trauma of her past, the loss of her brother and his friends, and understand how it has affected her relationship with her daughter.

Makkai has developed complete and complex characters that I feel like I know and truly care about. Her writing evokes overwhelming emotion and I love how the two time periods are weaved together through her compelling storytelling. Some people compare this book to A Little Life, and yes, both are gut wrenching and sad, but in The Great Believers there is a well researched overview of Chicago history and AIDs in the 1980s, a window into the art world, terrorism in 2015 Paris, so much love, friendship and family…a much warmer novel that combines the burden of memories with hope and positivity. I highly recommend this book – great for book clubs! ...more

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Dec 25, 2017 Tyler Goodson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: six-stars, arcs

The Great Believers is the kind of book you make time for, the kind you cancel plans and turn your phone off for. It's utterly believable, heartbreaking, and beautiful. In Makkai's hands, this generation devastated by AIDS are not victims, but fighters, resisters, and believers. I am thankful for this book. ...more

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May 18, 2020 Anthony rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: national-book-award-nominees, 2020-tbr-challenge, queer-content, modern-american-lit, pulitzer-finalists

I have rarely been so moved by a book as I was by this one. Written in a wonderfully lucid, accessible, open-hearted manner, it powerfully evokes in its twin stories a past and present that are complex, mournful, alive, and immediate. This novel is a beautifully generous testament to the necessity and power of bearing witness, of leaning into the moment that’s before us, and of forgiving ourselves when we inevitably mess it all up.

I am so grateful to have read this book.

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Jul 28, 2018 Doug rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

4.5, rounded up.

I've read a lot of criticism that a 40 year old straight woman dares to write a book about the early years of the AIDS crisis, and the author acknowledges that others might claim inappropriate appropriation - but it is clear that not only has she done her homework, but her skill and imagination has covered any glaring gaps from not witnessing it first-hand. Two of the blurbs for the book use the term 'immersive' and it's an apt description - one does become very involved in the t ...more

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About Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai

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"Rebecca Makkai is the author of the short story collection MUSIC FOR WARITIME (Viking, 2015) and the novels THE HUNDRED-YEAR HOUSE and THE BORROWER. Her short stories have appeared in four consecutive issues of THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES (2008-2011). She lives in Chicago and Vermont." ...more

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“But when someone’s gone and you’re the primary keeper of his memory—letting go would be a kind of murder, wouldn’t it? I had so much love for him, even if it was a complicated love, and where is all that love supposed to go? He was gone, so it couldn’t change, it couldn’t turn to indifference. I was stuck with all that love.” — 41 likes

“It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary.” — 38 likes

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