I remember vividly that bleak period in the early 1980s when a spectrum of bizarre but fatal conditions started afflicting gay men. The tabloids were in their element, describing the mystery illnesses as a ‘Gay Plague’ while rallying their readers to demand all homosexuals be deported somewhere remote, away from ‘decent people’. As religious leaders proclaimed the outbreak was a sign of retribution from whichever deity they promoted, flustered politicians attempted to avert panic by insisting the ‘general public’ need not concern itself with a ‘gay disease’. Young men suffering with illnesses like Kaposi’s sarcoma were said to ‘deserve whatever they got’ and were accused of being a drain on the NHS, then hospital staff started refusing to treat them for fear of catching something.

Because of ignorance and indifference, the LGB community (the T had not been added at that point) was all but abandoned and left to take care of itself while a pandemic spread unimpeded by those in authority. It was a shameful chapter in our history, and one that I hope will never be repeated for any reason.

My memories, of course, are of a time when HIV/AIDS – or human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immune deficiency syndrome – first arrived in the UK. Rebecca Makkai’s new novel is set in Chicago, primarily in and around East Lakeview’s Boystown neighbourhood, which was the first officially recognized gay village in the United States.

We are taken back to 1985, when Yale Tishman, an art gallery development director is on the brink of acquiring a remarkable collection of 1920s paintings and letters for his institution. Yet at the very moment his career begins to blossom, his personal life falls apart. AIDS is decimating Chicago’s gay community and his friends are dying one after another. His life has gone from a brief phase of great joy, freedom and camaraderie to an unending round of bad news, caring for the sick and attending funerals.

Thirty years later, Yales’ old friend Fiona is in Paris attempting to track down her adult daughter who has recently left a cult and had a baby. She stays in the home of an acquaintance who, like her, was a front-line fighter in the early years of the illness. It is here she finds herself confronting memories, personal trauma and the possible effect living with such an abundance of grief had on her only child.

We swing back and forth between the ’80s and 2015, as history plays out in the background, from the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster to the Bataclan massacre, and as Yale and Fiona attempt to find some hope among the human detritus.

The Great Believers is a tribute to those who nursed and lost loved ones during the early years; the people who suffered with and died from AIDS related illnesses while being treated as pariahs; and the few who survived long enough to receive life-extending antiretrovirals. As a novel it is compelling and affecting. Makkai’s research is exhaustive but unobtrusive, thus the lives of her well-developed characters leave one oscillating between feelings of desolation and hope, outrage and empathy. Several reviewers have accused the book of being overlong, and in parts, that may be so – but its is a miniscule gripe in a work of such magnitude.

Makkai’s story centres on one city, but it was a similar scenario throughout the developed world. These days the greatest number of people infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, resulting in the continued deaths of untold thousands each year. There have been over 35 million humans wiped out since AIDS was first identified in the early 1980s. One wonders how many of them would still be alive today were it not for discrimination and wilful blindness on the part of our leaders?

I remember the 1980's well, in the UK tales of hundreds of men dying of an unknown disease took many months to arrive, thereafter the story of AIDS is pretty well documented however I remember going to the movies and seeing adverts of huge tombstones - really scary stuff.

the 1980's part is a brilliant depiction of this period, the character of Yale is marvellously portrayed, far better than the others who are, by and large, not that pleasant . As to the story of Fiona and Claire all these years later ? it shows us how events of the past echo through the years and generations to come and how important finding peace with your past is. The slow and at times not so slow disintegration of entire communities breaks your heart and I would imagine that young adults today can't even imagine the horror of it.

Its hard not to be a little in love with Yale, honest and straightforward with a heart too easily broken. I nearly cried when I discovered what Roman had done. The City of Chicago which I know, is almost a character in itself, it is exquisitely portrayed as the vibrant, arty and ever changing city that it is. As for poor broken Fiona ? the tragedy of her life is that she pretty much broke under the strain of the loss of her brother and his friends, carrying the loss into her adult years and effectively ruining the relationship she had with her husband and daughter Claire. Its heartbreaking to read and reaffirms the adage that “Life is only for the living”

This is a story of losing yourself, finding yourself and being ok with whatever you find. Its a history lesson in how badly these men were treated and yet in Julian’s story you find comfort and joy that finally someone paid enough attention to, if not solve, then address the issue. All in all it is a must read for anyone with a heart.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Viking, and the author Rebecca Makkai.
If you are a fan of 'A Little Life' by Hanya Yanagihara, you will love this book. The themes and story are similar in many ways, but 'The Great Believers' is beautifully written and heartbreaking in its own right.
The characters are wonderfully presented, enabling you to become fully immersed in their stories and their lives.
Covering the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago, but also twinned with events in Paris in 2015, it is a profoundly moving novel which will stay with you long after you have put it down. I would highly recommend it.
5 stars (something I do not give out lightly!)

How on earth do you begin to review a book so powerful, so thought provoking and so well written? I will begin by saying I read it in a day and Yale has followed me around all night and day since I finished it.
Makkai’s characters are so well drawn that you can see and hear them, even miserable Debra had her own distinct voice.
The books main theme is not the AIDS crisis of the 80’s; though that features heavily and is very well researched, but the overarching theme of all the decades (the book moved between two times in the characters lives) and all of the characters interactions, is love. The love an elderly woman still has for her first love, Yale for his partner Charlie and friend Nico. Fiona’s love for her brother and for her daughter. The men’s love of ‘Boytown’. These loves are examined from all angles, from the characters themselves falling in love or out of it, from characters assessing their friends relationships, parents looking at their children’s relationships and trying to explain their own love as a parent.
The parallel that Nora draws between the generation of young men and women who lived through the First World War and the generation of gay men discovering often too late, that HIV and AIDS is stalking them, is striking. She says that her generation, shell shocked, missing limbs, bereaved of their entire friendship group makes them ‘older’ than their parents and that resonates so powerfully throughout the novel. Fiona for example is forced to take on a maternal role in her teens as Nico is dying with no other family support and then struggles to mother her own daughter.
I did wonder how Makkai would manage to conclude the novel but in my opinion, she did it perfectly. Some threads left unknotted and some neatly tied in a bow just like the real life she has written about should be.

Covering three different eras (skipping between 1980s Chicago and current-day Paris with each chapter, whilst also looking back to 1920s Paris as well), this is the story of one man’s attempt to live a normal life as his world crumbles around him and another woman’s attempt to deal with the fall-out from her the trauma of her youth. In Chicago, we follow Yale and his friend Fiona’s journey the growing AIDS epidemic and in Paris, many years later, we follow Fiona’s attempt to track down her missing daughter. These two narratives start out feeling distinctly separate but grow entwined as we learn more about the space between them.

This novel is probably one of the best literary attempts at conveying the impact and fallout of the AIDS crisis that I’ve ever read. Viewed from the assumed security of a monogamist relationship, we watch Yale grapple with the growing understanding of what shape this epidemic will take as more and more of his friends fall ill. He’s also just trying to get on with his life and his relationship as well acquire a potentially exciting collection of art for his gallery. Fiona, on the other hand, is way over her head in caring for her brother, then his boyfriend and one friend after an another as the virus wipes out almost her entire circle of friends. How does one possibly move on and lead a normal life after that? This book humanises this era with incredible grace. I did wonder at times where it was all headed but that’s the charm of a good story, right? Definitely one of the best new book releases you can read this summer.

Wow! I loved this book but I don't know why! The characters were great. It was so touching how they had formed such a bond after being ostracized from their families, I would love friends like these! I liked the fact that the chapters alternated between two different time periods as it gave me time to catch my breath from what was going on in the eighties. I was saddened by the response in America to AIDS. I was a young teenager in the UK when the virus struck and I don't think the UK responded by turning a blind eye (although I might be wrong as I was only young). I remember Princess Diana holding a victim and that changed a lot of people's opinions. I can't recommend this book highly enough, it really touched my heart.

This novel is an opus, reminiscent of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. The characters are well developed and magnetic, I felt reading them that I was another observer in those rooms and clubs and bars 1980's Chicago. The 1980's Fiona is likeable, the 2015 Fiona has lost all the strength of her youth and as a reader I found myself impatient with her but also so drawn to her weaknesses and identifying with the fear of never regaining the confidence of her child. Reading from 2018 England, there is so much I feel I have learnt about 1980's Chicago and I will as the author urges in her acknowledgements, seek other accounts of this time. A wonderful, emotional book and I can't recommend it more highly.

The Great Believers is a novel, quite epic in scope, that moves between the AIDS crisis in Chicago in the 1980s and Paris of 2015, before and after the Bataclan attacks. It opens with Yale Tishman mourning the death of his friend Nico, and tells Yale's story as he works on bringing some old paintings into an art gallery in Chicago as part of an old lady's dying wish; at the same time, the novel tells the story of Nico's little sister Fiona who, thirty years later, is in Paris trying to repair her relationship with her daughter, Claire, amidst remaining friends and the ghosts of others.

The novel is, as the author states, based on real events, and the way it is tied to real tragedy is important; it is easy, in particular, to be drawn into caring about Yale and his narrative because it is so real. The whole story about the artwork that Yale must fight to get into the gallery, whilst dealing with friends dying and his own potential for having the virus, may seem to some like a subplot to the main narrative of the crisis and the men involved. However, Makkai tries to draw parallels across time not only between the two narratives in the novel, but with the artists in the early twentieth century whose lives were torn apart by war. How effective this is may be a matter of opinion, but the book clearly tries to span time and show tragedy and trauma.

The Great Believers is a sad yet readable novel showing a group of friends and what remains of them thirty years later. It can be powerful, but its length may put some people off. It is a novel that would be well-suited to being paired with first-hand accounts of the AIDS crisis, to highlight the personal that is depicted fictionally in this book.

Set in the late 1980/early 1990s and 2015 this is the tale of a young man in the midst of the AIDS crisis in Chicago and a woman trying to find her daughter in Paris.

I was a teenager when AIDS hit the news and I remember feeling that the world had changed; that we would not have the same freedoms and experiences of previous generations. Thankfully prevention and science has meant that AIDS did not wipe out the whole world, however it did bulldoze its way through the gay community, wiping out a generation of young people. The book brought back the feeling of hopelessness and fear that was prevalent at the time.

The modern half of the story had me amazed that the Bataclan bombings were in 2015; I thought it was much more recent. But then there have been so many awful terrorist episodes that it becomes difficult to accurately place them in time.

The stories did tie together in the end, but it was quite a long circuitous route to get there. Fiona, whose brother died of AIDS early on in the tale, tried to support so many of the other men, but ended up marring her own relationships in the process. There is a glimmer of salvation at the end and a little ray of hope after the sadness of her early life.

Enjoyable read, although quite a hefty tome.

I really liked this book and loved the two different stories - but at times felt they would have worked better as just that - two different stories - as the connection between the 1985 and 2015 stories was quite tenuous. I preferred the section set in Paris and was intrigued to find out what would happen between Fiona and Claire. I found the subplot with the elderly lady with the potentially valuable artwork to be an extra the book didn't really need. But I found lots to like about this book and there were lots of interesting characters.

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, and the former especially has a far more engaging story. The only character I was able to form any kind of connection with in this book was Yale, and even that took some time.

It just dragged a lot, with many parts feeling superfluous. The Paris chapters were particularly dull and they felt like a completely separate story - one I don't really feel needed to be told. Overall, the prose was lengthy, repetitive, and difficult to enjoy.

A well-written novel that alternates between the stories of Yale, a young man living through the Aids epidemic in the 1980s and Fiona searching for her daughter and grandaughter in Paris in 2015. I enjoyed it.

I loved this book! It's a sweeping, generous, humane epic about community and love and trauma and art and memory. It's a Proper Big Old-Fashioned Novel, the way something like A Little Life or even Middlemarch is, unembarrassedly concerned with moral questions in a way that isn't less serious for often being very funny and occasionally shamelessly manipulative about its manoevering of the present and past tense threads (I mean this approvingly - it draws attention to itself doing this, and it works). I spent two days with it - it's a somewhat unlikely pageturner, but it is - and cried at the end because of the diffuse, fragile web of connections and, above all, luminous compassion that Makkai weaves. Excellent.