The Great Believers

A wonderfully well written novel.

4.5, I loved this

One sentence synopsis... Told in alternating chapters, between a group of gay men in Chicago in the 1980s and a mother searching for her daughter in Paris in 2015, this books tells the story of the AIDS epidemic from the initial outbreak to present day. .

Read it if you liked... ‘The Normal Heart', ‘Dallas Buyers Club', or other thoughtful and heartbreaking chronicles of the AIDS crisis. Also, the series ‘Looking' for the complicated male friendships. .

Dream casting... Kate Hudson as the flighty but loyal mother Fiona. Jonathan Groff as Yale. Also, this would need to be a miniseries instead of a movie. Production companies take note. To make this layered, decade-crossing story a 2hr movie would be to rob it of so much depth.

Wow. Just wow. This book is so marvelously sad. Tragically, beautifully, wonderfully sad. It's that perfect confluence of art, emotion, and entertainment and I absolutely loved it.

I'm finding these days the mark of a good book means a few things for me: 1) I can't put it down, and when I have to, I spend a good portion of the day looking forward to getting back to it. 2) some sentences make me pause and reread to reflect on some sentiment that seems so absolutely true to me, yet so nuanced that I'm almost surprised someone else felt the same 3) I'm completely immersed in a different perspective and a different time — so much so that I feel, viscerally, the pains of that perspective/time... and get so engrossed that I find myself googling, say, “1980s AIDS crisis Chicago” because I need to know everything.

And this book did those things. It sounds corny but reading it, I felt among a group of friends. And the plot is consuming, besides. Great read!

4.5

This is partly a historical novel, set in the early 1980's in Chicago among a group of gay men whose community is devastated by AIDS. The other part of the novel is set 30 years later in Paris as the younger sister of one of those men, Fiona, searches for her estranged daughter. The novel alternates between the two storylines one chapter at a time.

I was riveted by the earlier storyline. I thought Makkai captured so well the sense of these young men at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic trying to take care of each other and their community and at the same time go on with their normal lives. One of the things I found so moving was how healthy people learned what to plan for from their sick friends—what kind of insurance to get, which hospital or doctor to go to, how to assign a trusted person your power of attorney so that your wishes would be respected if your disapproving family tried to meddle with your care when you were too sick to advocate for yourself. The main character of this part of the book, Yale, is a gay man working as an art curator for an up and coming gallery. He was a friend of Fiona's brother, Nico, who has died of AIDS just as the novel begins. In the course of doing his job and showing up for his community, Yale suffers two breathtaking betrayals that upend his life.

The second part of the book is set in 2015 in Paris, where Fiona has hired a detective to find her daughter and grandchild. She stays with Richard, a now famous photographer who got his start in Chicago in the ‘80's, and was part of the community of gay men that Fiona knew so well. Richard provides the comfort of someone who has known her since her youth and the discomfort of proximity to so many sad memories. I didn't like this storyline as much because I found myself annoyed by Claire, the runaway daughter. However, I did like getting to know Fiona's story after she was done taking care of her dying friends, and seeing the reverberations throughout her life of that time.

4.5
Incredibly powerful and impactful

“Nora said, ‘That's why I picked you... Because you'll understand. It was a ghost town. Some of those boys were dear friends.'”
This is one of those books that is way more than it initially seems while you're reading it. In fact, if I didn't stop once in a while to reflect on the story, I wouldn't have liked it as much. There are parts of the book that made me wonder why it was even included in the story, particularly in the 2015 chapters, but also the details of Yale's art dealings in the 80s. (The book's chapters flip from the 1980s to 2015)
But this is because despite what one might get from the blurb, this isn't simply about the AIDS epidemic in Chicago's gay community, it is also about how we as individuals and societies reckon with unspeakable atrocities. The book is peppered with major world events besides AIDS, and while the characters around it all stop to feel really horrible about it, their own issues quickly take over as being more important. Of course this is natural, and even one of the main characters admits in 2015 that that “Deep down, she didn't care quite on the same visceral level about the ongoing AIDS crisis in Africa”.
Understanding this, the book also contains a side story about a woman's time in post-WWI France, and shows striking similarities between what the war did to a generation of young men in Europe and culture more broadly, and what AIDS did to a generation of young men and culture in America. The book then begs the question of whether the AIDS crisis should be remembered in the same light as the Challenger explosion - of something that happened in the 80s that was really sad - or in the same light as a great war - a key point in our culture's history in which many thousands of innocent young men died far too young - and makes a strong argument for the latter perspective.
Quote from near the end of the book: "I keep thinking of Nora's stories about the guys who just shut down after the war. This is a war, it is. It's like you've been in the trenches for seven years. And no one's gonna understand that. No one's gonna give you a Purple Heart."
Of course, in popular culture, the story of AIDS in America is treated more like simply a sad thing that happened, and there was a quilt and a concert, and now we can talk about something else. And after reading how these gay characters talked about their situation in light of the politics and the stigma of that time, one can't help but think that we treat it as lesser because our culture still sees LGBTQ people and culture as something separate from the rest of our culture, and so AIDS is a sad thing that happened to them and their society, and somehow even though we know better than to treat it as a “gay cancer” now, it still isn't treated like something that happened to all of us. The massive loss of life is all of our loss, like the great wars, and we should treat it that way.
The 2015 parts of the book also have a lot going for them, along the same themes of what matters most to us, and what should matter most, and how we prioritize how and who we love. But I feel I'm rambling, and that part impacted me less viscerally, so I'll avoid going on about other themes I kind of liked, and just encourage you to read the book.

This novel about the emergence of the AIDS crisis and its long-lasting aftermath is one of the best books I've read in recent years. It has a lot of moving parts, but essentially it is interwoven stories of two complex characters: Fiona (Saint Fiona of Boystown as her daughter derisively calls her), whose brother Nico dies from AIDS before the book begins, and Yale a gay friend of Nico's who becomes Fiona's friend also. As the gay community in Chicago in the '80s is decimated, questions swirl about the disease, along with blame and recriminations, both personal and political. It's beautifully written, yet very readable. Highly recommended.

Everything you've heard is true. We lost a whole generation of men in a brutal fashion to a virus that still haunts us to this day. It was awful. Reading this brought back that time plus reading about 2015 fifteen now makes it a double historical. So much has happened in eight years!Fiona lives with the memory of her brother and his friends who succumbed to AIDS and 2015 she's still carrying that weight. Perhaps she always will. Perhaps we will too.The author evokes that period in time, 1985/86 etc., with almost photographic skill which only makes the sure losses to come more devastating. The present time of the book (2015), where Fiona has come to Paris in search of her estranged daughter, serves as journey to finally begin cauterizing the open wound that has been her life.I loved Yale ❤️The audio by [a:Michael Crouch 838493 Michael Crouch https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1695634287p2/838493.jpg] will break your heart.

AIDS hitting Chicago in the mid-eighties and how it pulls a circle of gay friends apart. Sex becomes politics, and a lot more complicated. Sickness, betrayal, secrets, regret and guilt. And what losing most of your friends does to those that remain, who become sole bearers of someone's memory, forever dealing with the aftermath of the experience.

Super well written, an all-around solid novel. The writing alternates between the Eighties and the present, with lose ties between the two stories. I loved everything about the Eighties and Yale a lot more. I thought Nora's exhibition, her dedication to her lost love, was beautifully - but not too neatly - woven into the whole narrative.

WHO LIVES, WHO DIES, WHO TELLS YOUR STORY

1. Very cool book about art, the AIDS crisis, and what it means to love others.
   2. Took a while, but I was able to differentiate ALL of the characters – there are a lot of names.
   3. 1980's sections was very strong. Some people find the 2015 sections weaker, but I liked those too!
   4. Let it envelope you!
   
   5. Took me 7 months to read. I found the pages to be dense with information, hardly a word that could be glossed over. I bet Makkai really wants you to read every single word to understand things completely. I had to stop because I wasn't making fast enough progress. Glad I finally sat down to finish it all.
   What a neat book – characters are alive, Makkai does a great job of bringing Chicago alive on the page.

At its heart it about the Aids epidemic in the 80's specifically in Chicago and how it decimated that community. The trick is how Makkai manages to show so many different facets to the story. It avoids being one-note and I never felt like some voyeuristic tourist chaperoned by a voluble tourguide shouting about all the interesting gays! It also steers clear of being pure misery porn as well.

The 2015 timeline with Fiona looking for her daughter in Paris allows us to reflect on the 80's from the perspective of a caregiver. But the story didn't quite gel and it felt almost cruel to know that this women who cared so deeply for these men dying of AIDs would end up alienating her own child as a result. And we also get memories of an artist commune in Paris of the 20's which adds a bit of gallery acquisition thriller in the middle.

I guess it's just this weird theme of the excitement of living in a moment with these larger than life figures with all the attendant beauty and tragedy but how it leaves its mark on the next generation. The disconnect with Nora wanting to preserve her memories at the expense of her children who are shown as petty and small-minded, or Fiona's love for the men of boystown throwing a long shadow over her own daughter's understanding of maternal love. It's a lot to pack into a book and it started to feel shaggy around the edges. If it sometimes misses the mark, it still manages to stay a compelling read.

Since this was published in 2018, there's no need to recite the plot. Just to say THIS IS ONE GREAT BOOK! So heartfelt, so nuanced, so well-written with both lyrical passages that break your heart, historical context that helps you understand the 1980's and the AIDS crisis in America, a love letter to the great cities of Chicago and Paris, and a bunch of true-to-life human beings it was my great honor to spend time with. If you never read this, do so now. It sat on my TBR shelf for years - not sure why. But this is my nudge to you to pick it up and fall into its pages. Yes, it's long. Yes, it's dense. Yes, there is a large cast of characters. But it is worth it. A masterpiece.

Such a powerful novel, bringing me back to the 80s and a world I knew, but really didn't. The parallel stories are effective, if imperfect. I was affected deeply by Yale. And I appreciated the way we can feel the long lasting effects of a devastating disease and decade.

I loved this book.

Yet another book I simply cannot get into that is critically acclaimed. The story is certainly compelling, and yet I found the dialogue tiresome and couldn't get further along.