The Great Believers
A Novel
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4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER
ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER
THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER
Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler • One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
“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 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 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.
Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, The Seattle Times, Bustle, Newsday, AM New York, BookPage, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lit Hub, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library and Chicago Public Library
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The AIDS crisis may no longer be front-page news, but its reverberations are still painful. Chapter by chapter, The Great Believers alternates between two intrinsically linked characters: a thoughtful, intelligent art-gallery director living in ’80s Chicago and a mother searching for her estranged child in Paris three decades later. Rebecca Makkai’s beautiful, moving novel paints a nuanced portrait of a devastating epidemic and the lifelong impacts it had on those who made it through, no one truly unscathed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Spanning 30 years and two continents, the latest from Makkai (Music for Wartime) is a striking, emotional journey through the 1980s AIDS crisis and its residual effects on the contemporary lives of survivors. In 1985 Chicago, 30-something Yale Tishman, a development director at a fledgling Northwestern University art gallery, works tirelessly to acquire a set of 1920s paintings that would put his workplace on the map. He watches his close-knit circle of friends die from AIDS, and once he learns that his longtime partner, Charlie, has tested positive after having an affair, Yale goes into a tailspin, worried he may also test positive for the virus. Meanwhile, in 2015, Fiona Marcus, the sister of one of Yale's closest friends and mother hen of the 1980s group, travels to Paris in an attempt to reconnect with her adult daughter, Claire, who vanished into a cult years earlier. Staying with famed photographer Richard Campo, another member of the old Chicago gang, while searching, Fiona revisits her past and is forced to face memories long compartmentalized. As the two narratives intertwine, Makkai creates a powerful, unforgettable meditation, not on death, but rather on the power and gift of life. This novel will undoubtedly touch the hearts and minds of readers.
Customer Reviews
What an emotional masterpiece - tears through its crafted beauty
I am so happy this book exists. It provides such a compelling, emotional narrative to the lived experiences of gay men in a time rife with turbulence and social ostracism. As someone who grew up struggling with their own sexuality, reading this resonated so strongly with my past and, I believe, is a must read for others who desire to learn more about the hardships of queer communities.
Brilliant
I laughed and cried and smiled and got angry but most of all I appreciated the love between friends.
Fantastic Read
This book was so moving. For any of us with compassion that lived through this, it brings back the hopelessness that permeated around this disease, but also the happiness and laughter that represented the young and the free who were just beginning to be accepted in this world.