How does one live in the wake of apocalyptic grief? How do you survive in a world which is collapsing around you? How does one hold on to belief? Telling two entwined stories set between 1980s Chicago and 2015 Paris, Rebecca Makkai examines lives lived through crisis and the shockwaves they leave behind. Finishing The Great Believers several weeks ago, I have felt rather haunted by it. At first it felt strange that the 1980s qualified as a period for historical fiction but sitting down to read it, I realised that the past was indeed a completely different country. These lives which came so close to coinciding with my own were still beyond my imagining.

The main and indeed more compelling plot strand centres around Yale Tishman, a development director for an art gallery. It is 1985 and a compelling opportunity comes his way, allowing him to acquire a collection of paintings from the 1920s. On the one hand, he is flourishing professionally. He hopes to surprise his long-term partner Charlie with the news that they will soon be able to afford to buy an apartment. He is part of a vibrant and supportive gay community within Boystown, Chicago. But in the midst of all this, disaster is coming ever closer as the AIDS epidemic picks up its pace.

The novel opens with Yale attending the wake for his friend Nico. The funeral will be family only even though they kicked Nico out when he was a teenager and are pointedly ignoring his cause of death. The only relative who has remained loyal is Nico's younger sister Fiona. The second plot strand thirty years later sees Fiona journeying to Paris in search of her estranged daughter who may or may not have escaped a cult. Fiona by now is in her early fifties and still grieving how the AIDS epidemic blighted her life. During her stay in Paris, she reconnects with Richard, an old friend and celebrated photographer who chronicled the crisis. Both Yale and Fiona are trying to believe in the good, to find something to hold on to, in a world full of disaster.

In 1985, Yale meets with Nico and Fiona's aunt Nora, who hopes to bequeath her art collection to the university. She was part of the Parisian artist community both pre and post World War I. This link between the generation lost to the trenches and that which is lost to the scourge of HIV and AIDS is a stroke of brilliance. It gives a pointed comparison to the reader hat what happened within the gay community in the 1980s was equally tragic, encouraging empathy for a situation that for too long has been subject to stigma. Another fascinating echo rings between Nora's lifelong sorrow for her lost artist lover Ranko Novak and Fiona's emotional isolation during her twenty-first century visit to Paris. To further underline the point, Fiona's stay coincides with the Paris attacks.

Makkai is clearly concerned with questions of legacy. Both Nora and Fiona see themselves as the memory keepers for lives cut down without reaching their full potential. We hear so many tidy phrases which describe grief. The late Her Majesty the Queen described it as 'the price we pay for love'. I have also heard it as 'love with nowhere to go'. But both Nora and Fiona have borne heavy losses, feeling more like heavy burdens than anything to be reframed as love. How do you move forward and bring new love into your life when you know that without you, the person you loved will pass into complete obscurity? As Nora observes to Yale, 'letting go would be a kind of murder, wouldn’t it? I was stuck with all that love.'

Another important point is around the role of art in securing legacy. Nora's art collection includes paintings from various notable artists but she insists on including work from Novak alongside his more celebrated peers in the hope that he will be remembered after her death. In 2015, Richard has a photography exhibition in Paris featuring previously unseen images of the young men from Fiona's circle who were lost to AIDS. In capturing their experiences in art, is Richard preserving them? Is it enough?

Writing about the AIDS crisis must always be done with sensitivity. While Yale is perhaps the most compelling character, Fiona is the main voice of the book since she features in both timelines. This could seem awkward, placing the experience of a straight woman at the heart of a book about a disease which particularly blighted the gay community, but Makkai notes that she had gone out of her way to interview several women who had had a carer role to friends who contracted AIDS. There was an emotional and administrative burden carried by the women who did not catch the disease but yet were forced to watch those they loved die of it. Fiona takes on power of attorney for friend after friend and then has to live on as the survivor, commenting in 2015 on the 'the bloodbath of her twenties, after everyone she loved had died or left her'. Little wonder that her attempt at constructing a family foundered.

Through Fiona, Makkai also observes on the difficulty of looking back on AIDS. It is not in the past. The continent of Africa is still suffering. There is no room for relief at an enemy defeated. But yet there is something particular about the period that Makkai is writing about which does feel like it belongs in a history lesson. Yale and his contemporaries had endured difficult and repressive childhoods. Many of them had been thrown out by their families, shunned by their relatives for their sexuality. They move to Chicago and are finally able to be free and express their true selves. And in that very moment of liberty, of self-acceptance, the disease captures them. The cruelty of it is unbearable. Add in society's wider homophobia and you have a recipe for utter disaster.

Makkai catches scenes such as Yale being asked to leave a client's home since they sense his sexuality and do not want to risk AIDS. This despite the fact that he is not sick. Later, when Yale is staying with a supportive friend, she is forced to ask him to leave because her former husband is threatening to challenge their custody agreement, once more citing potential AIDS as a risk. Yale is living in the eye of the storm and the reader feels that growing dread that the poor young man is doomed, that somewhere or other this disease will catch up with him and take him. These levels of barbarism are hard to believe and yet they seem to be based on fact.

I remember listening to Marta Kauffman's commentary on the first season of Friends during which she made a reference to how different the world had become 'after AIDS'. Much like other seismic events (e.g. the Berlin Wall falling, Margaret Thatcher) which just pre-dated my wider consciousness, I can easily forget their true significance. Hearing Charlie make grand speeches about safe sex and the importance of condoms was startling because within my own generation, we were taught that from high school age onwards. But it was the AIDS crisis that made that message so important. As is so often the case with high quality historical fiction, reading this novel gave me important context about a period around which I had been embarrassingly ignorant.

But coming away from the novel, the message that has resonated the most was just how much courage it takes to keep on going in a world that is out of control. Fiona looks upon the Paris terror attacks of 2015 and has no time for it, she had 'been in the middle of a different story, one that had nothing to do with this. She was a person who was finding her daughter, making things right with her daughter, and there was no room in that story for the idiocy of extreme religion, the violence of men she’d never met. Just as she’d been in the middle of a story about divorce when the towers fell in New York City, throwing everyone’s careful plans to shit. Just as she’d once been in a story about raising her own brother, growing up with her brother in the city on their own, making it in the world, where the virus and the indifference of greedy men had steamrolled through. She thought of Nora, whose art and love were interrupted by assassination and war. Stupid men and their stupid violence, tearing apart everything good that was ever built. Why couldn’t you ever just go after your life without tripping over some idiot’s dick?'

There are many things about the state of the nation, the planet, the universe, that cause me anxiety and dismay. But The Great Believers seemed to find hope even in the darkest of moments. Your story may not go the way that you want it to go, but that does not mean that you give up. It does not mean that you admit defeat or lay down your sword. Surprisingly hopeful for a novel so preoccupied with death and gloom, The Great Believers is a thoughtful exploration of what it means to survive, both the pain and the joy.

3.5 but if I'm honest, it's just a 3. I can't fault the writing and I can't fight the story but I feel I need to fault the way the story was told. Perhaps foolishly, I kept thinking about A Little Life and making comparisons between the two and then I just started to depress myself. I've also read Makkai's the Hundred Year House and I didn't like it either. I don't think Makkai is an author I will come back to.

This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

One of the few books I've read which explores the initial impact of AIDS on a group of friends and their community without mawkishness. The title gives nothing away (and I'm still not sure what it refers to, though that may be a lack of insight on my part). The reverberations of the crisis are told through the eyes of the victims, survivors, their friends and families right up to the present day. Not as difficult to read as the subject may imply, and one warms to the characters and their foibles.

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 there were too many sub-plots and unnecessary distractions that should have been cut out. My interest often drifted and I had to force myself to push through the dry bits. The strength of the novel lies in the uncompromising portrayal of the epidemic, and the initial ignorance and lack of understanding of the general public. I found the topic of the book interesting and I learnt a bit about this part of our history that was known to me only through the movie Philadelphia.

"All my friends are dying, or they're dead already..."

Perhaps not the most uplifting novel you'll ever read, but one you might remember for a while.

Many thanks to Little, Brown books for my review copy in exchange for an honest review.

I *loved* this book, and was so impressed with how this author pulled off such an ambitious project. I was particularly impressed by the way in which she wove together two storylines without pace sagging, and also with how she so empathically brought to life the fears and hopes and heartaches of the Aids crisis. Memorable characters and scenes.

The Great Believers tells the terrible story of the Aids epidemic of the 1980s. Yale is a young, gay man in Chicago in 1985 when the crisis is at its height and the story opens with a funeral for his friend Nico. A funeral that Nico’s partner Terrance and their gay friends are barred from attending. Instead, they have a party, they reminisce, all the while oppressed by the shadow of the disease. Grieving alongside Yale and his friends is Fiona, Nico’s younger sister, who rails against the treatment of her friends, by her family and by society at large as the gay community is blamed for the spread of Aids.

As Yale watches his friends contract HIV and succumb to Aids Makkai tackles many tough topics; the lack of government action, the spiralling anti-gay attacks and the HIV test which many refuse to take, from fear of knowing and fear that the data will be used to target them. Within Yale’s story is that of Nora, an elderly woman who was an artist’s model in Europe between the wars and whose art collection Yale is trying to secure for the Briggs gallery.

Alternating with Yale’s chapters are those of an older Fiona who, in 2015, is searching for her estranged daughter in Paris. There she reconnects with Richard, a famous photographer from her brother’s circle of friends and continues to struggle with the loss of so many of her friends.
These three storylines, the early 20th century, the mid-1980s and 2015, inform one another, making some powerful and unexpected connections. Nora’s stories of the First World War recalls a generation lost, leaving behind people who have lost everybody. Yale recognises the parallels with his own experience in Chicago where “entire apartment buildings [are] devastated” by the soaring death-rate among (primarily) young, gay men. Fiona struggles with the long-term effects of such sweeping grief and loss. After watching Aids claims those she loves, able only to offer support and care she is dubbed “Saint Fiona of Boystown” by a daughter who resents the way the experience and responsibility have marginalised her in her mother’s life.

Unfortunately, the balance between the three isn’t quite right. For the first two-thirds Yale’s narrative is by far the most compelling. It’s raw and nuanced and brings to life the high emotions caused by the constant stress of the crisis, from fear to recklessness, grief and joy. But it does get bogged down in Yale’s negotiations over Nora’s collections, both with her family and his colleagues. Nora’s life-story is fascinating, as are some of Makkai’s meditations on the power and role of art and memory. The dilatory, repetitive discussions between the competing interested parties – much less so.

Even more problematic is Fiona’s present-day (2015) narrative. The whole thing feels under-developed and only precariously linked to the main story except as a way to look back on the worst years of the epidemic. But this is obscured by the details of her search, the private detective and the man Fiona meets on the plane out – I still have only the haziest idea why he exists at all. The focus on fundamentalism, from the cult Claire was once a member of to the Bataclan terrorist attacks is odd, perhaps this is the new fear and the new threat? From war, to disease to terrorism? It doesn’t quite work and much of it feels irrelevant. These sections, along with parts of Yale’s story, slow the place to a crawl in many places. So much so that a third in I almost gave up entirely.

So why didn’t I?

Because where the Great Believers is good, it is astonishingly, heart-wrenchingly good and it tells an important story with tenderness, understanding and rage. Makkai’s writing (where it is free of unnecessary plot entanglements) is beautiful. Most important of all are her characters, who deal with their everyday lives against a backdrop of crisis in such complex, contradictory, understandable ways that they truly live lives of their own. They do stupid things, they are cruel, they have dreams and ideals and they struggle to meet them. Most of all they are human beings struggling to deal with sickness and death against a hostile public, blamed for a situation that hurts them the most and criminally failed by lack of government action and aid. “There had been a holocaust,” Fiona muses in 2015, “a mass murder of neglect and antipathy.” She’s right. Makkai’s characters, in all their vice and virtue, bring the full horror of the situation to life. Despite the book’s weaknesses these characters are worth persevering for and while treatments have made the threat of HIV more manageable with almost 37 million people woldwide living with HIV/AIDs and hostility, violence and discrimination still faced by the LGBT community, they tell a story that isn’t over yet.

A wonderful, heartbreaking tale. I have read novels which skirt around the edges of the AIDS crisis in America but Makkai is the first mainstream author I have read who embraces it head first. She rightly approaches it as a crisis and does not hold back the realities of the disease. Initially I found myself racing through Fiona's passages to learn more about Yale, but by the end I was equally attached to both storylines.

Please do ignore any comparisons with A Little Life. Yes, there are gay male protagonists in both and yes, there is heartbreak in both but that is where the comparison ends. They are both great novels in their own rights and let's not over simplify either simply because they both have male LGBTQ characters and are both over 400 pages.

Also, I would very much recommend reading the author's note at the end. She addresses appropriation perfectly.

I have the feeling that this is a short very well-written book that's been forced to become a longer one. That short kernel is the story of the group of friends in 1980s Chicago who all succumb to AIDS. Their fears, their vigour and the singular ways they confront their own mortality are persuasive, sensitive and utterly haunting - especially the passages where Yale, the last of them, endures his process of dying. Some of the paragraphs I read several times, simply to linger in the insight.
Unfortunately, other parts of the book lost my interest. There's a modern timeline as well, where Fiona, whose brother was one of the first men to die of AIDS, is looking for her daughter in Paris. She meets a photographer who was also a survivor of the Chicago times and they come to terms with everything they saw. This looks like it's been bolted on, possibly to tick some sure-fire marketing tick-boxes - lost child, woman alone, coming to terms etc. I'm sorry to be so cynical, but the fit isn't comfortable. This seems too ordinary. It lacks the compelling allure of the earlier timeline. Even, the links between it and the colourful, tragic past seem tenuous. Also, in the 1980s timeline there's a plot involving an artist - Yale was a director of an art gallery. This takes up too much space and I think I feel that because the author wasn't as interested in it as she was in her gragic men (and with good reason). It seems like another element that's been added to pad out the book.
So - unfortunately, much of the book seems unengaging and unnecessary. I can't see that it deserves the hype it's had, except for its subject matter. I suspect this may be what it's judged on - its subject and not whether it works as a whole. Ironically, if it had stuck to the narrative thread that was most original and strong, and had been issued as a novella, I think it would have worked very well indeed.

Beautiful, poignant and moving ! The language is seamless and easy to read. The characters are so well portrayed and the story very much rooted in the reality of the AIDS epidemic of the 80's.

I loved this, really loved it. It’s one of those books where you turn the last page and there’s that empty feeling, knowing that there’s no more of it to read.
There are two timelines: the mid-1980s and the emergence and devastation of the AIDS epidemic amongst a group of gay friends; 2015, and one of the characters from the 1980s is travelling to Paris to try and find her estranged daughter. She meets up with one of the characters who was also in Chicago in the 80s.
This is such a heart breaking story, particularly the earlier timeline. The panic, disbelief and sorrow of the men as they and their friends contract AIDS (such was the speed of their deaths after they found out they had the virus, I can’t remember there being any mention of HIV) was described so well, and Fiona, who is in both timelines, was there for those who needed her starting with her own brother. That seemed like such a huge responsibility to me, and she’s such a strong character: we do see the repercussions of those years though, in 2015.
This is definitely a book to read with a box of tissues to hand, but it’s worth every tear. I can see this being one of my favourite books of the year.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to read this. And yes, it’s a completely honest review!

I loved this novel – it was very evocative of both timeframes and places that it spanned. It moves between Chicago in the 1980s when AIDS was decimating the gay community and Paris in 2015. The main link between the two timeframes is Fiona who lost her brother and many of his friends to AIDS. She is now in Paris seeking her lost and estranged daughter Claire who has joined a cult.

I preferred the 1980s thread as this not only followed spoke movingly of how AIDS affected so many in those times but there was also a narrative about some works of art which had suddenly come to light. I always enjoy a book which weaves the plot around interesting real life subjects or objects. Reading this on my Kindle was great as you just hover your finger over an artist’s name and up pops their Wikipedia entry.

I wasn’t so keen on how the two timeframes kept jumping back and forth and I didn’t find the Paris one that interesting. I think I was expecting more linkup between the two timeframes. Having said all that it’s well-written story which has stayed with me and one I will ponder over for some time. I’m not in a Book Group but I think this would be an excellent book for one.

With thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have read only one other book by this author which I loved for its storytelling, pace and characterisation. However i have to admit to being disappointed with this book. LGBT literature has much to say and this book starts off well but it fails to reach a level where i was fully invested
The characters are one-dimensional and I have to say very "woe is me." Apart from the presence of Fiona and Richard i completely fail to see what the connection from 1980 to 2015 is. Other reviewers compare this favourably to A Little Life but i have to say i preferred the Hanya Yanagihara book and, indeed Middlesex to this. I think this book had something important to say but it could have been better said and in a more engaging manner without the 2015 strand. It was lengthy and took all my willpower to get through it. you know a book is not really speaking to you when you are constantly putting it down. I don't think this shows Makkai at her best It is not all bad and i have decided on a 2 star rating. I enjoyed some parts i loved the characterisation of Nora and some of the art discussion but I don't think these were really the greatest part of what the author was trying to say

Wow a really emotional read.
I was just 11 in 1985 when the majority of this book was set. I remember distinctly my teenage years hearing the stories of the AIDS epidemic. But I think I was too young to really have appreciated the impact it had at the beginning on communities, particularly the gay communities in America. By the time i was old enough the narrative had moved on slightly, the medicines and treatment had vastly improved and it was no longer considered at all a “gay persons disease”

But this book is set in the time when it still was, a time of homophobia and mistruths. So this was as much a non fiction read for me in many ways.

Really powerful, really important, and for me a setting and a theme strongly lacking in recent fiction. It’s a time and subject matter that should never be forgotten and so a novel this is critical for ensuring this slice of history is captured.

Sad but all too true to life.

The 80s in Chicago was a place to be yourself, be it Gay, Lesbian, Transgender etc. But there was also a terrible disease decimating the Gay community, wrongly called the Gay Plague. People saw their friends and loved ones dying from a disease that has no cure and little understanding by the outside world.

This is the story of those times and the aftermath of the devastating decade and those who are left behind to mourn and fight for those who can no longer do it themselves.

This is an absorbing story played out over 30 years, telling of deep friendship and loss which cannot help but move you to tears. The obvious lack of concern from government and the medical profession towards the suffers is appalling.

I enjoyed reading the book as I was a teenager in the eighties and remember the Aids virus becoming news, although I was ambivalent at that time I am afraid to say. My only criticism is I got very confused about who was who as there was a lot of characters involved.

A must-read book that will have you rooting for the sufferers hoping for a cure.

Chester.

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of this book to review.

It’s a very powerful tale although the story line is before my day. It’s a bit all over for me but it really does pack a punch.

At first I found this difficult to engage with. Perhaps, for me, too many characters were introduced too soon and I subsequently felt a bit lost. However, as I ventured further the main characters became stronger and a friendship with Yale developed.
Whilst I acknowledge the death toll due to Aids was exceedingly high, I felt Makkai unnecessarily over-emphasised this at times, to the detriment of the emotional story. The skipping between the eras was interesting but somewhat confusing until I became used to it.
I enjoyed this more as I progressed.

This is a great read and gets better as the novel progresses. Rebecca Makkai deals with the AIDS crisis in the 1980s with superb compassion. She delves into the lives of many fictional characters, largely gay men, who are affected by this terrible disease. However, alongside this, the writer alternates the chapters with a focus on 2015, set primarily in Paris. The link is between Fiona, tracking down her daughter, Claire - and Fiona is also the sister of Nico, the first man to succumb to AIDS early in the novel, as well as a lynch-pin in Yale’s life.

Towards the end, Makkai’s prose is incredibly sad. It is not unnecessarily sentimental, though, but it deals with people’s lives in incredibly compassionate ways. The subplot deals with art and acquiring it for an exhibition - and this involves Yale, the protagonist, who is integral to the whole plot.

It took me a while to get into this, perhaps because I was expecting it to be like other books of a similar genre. But, I am so pleased I persevered and finished it. You should too.

It's uplifting how far society has progressed, since the 1980s ,with regard to both Aids and homosexuality. This book, in alternating between 1985 and 2015, brilliantly captures this transition. Makkai writes sensitively, yet frankly, as to how Aids devastated the lives not only of those who contracted the illness but also how the seemingly endless cycle of terrible deaths impacted on so many others. No punches are pulled in depicting the open hostility shown to gay men and as to how they would be picked on in the street. If this were all this book contained it would be a grim read indeed but Makkai balances this with an uplifting story of how, despite the difficulties, her cast of characters still manage to enjoy life. The main character, Yale, works with an emerging art gallery and the story of his struggle to acquire an art collection is almost a novel in itself. Then there is Fiona Marcus, sister to the gay Nico who gets too close to many of his friends and ends up, over a span 30 years being the last person many of them see before dying of Aids. Her visit to Paris in 2015 is a revelation to her and, furthermore, provides the setting for a real surprise ending. A grim theme undoubtedly but, paradoxically, an uplifting read. I can only repeat that society and medicine, thank goodness, have both come a long way in their understanding of both Aids and the gay community

THE GREAT BELIEVERS is a strong, emotional read exploring the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago as well as its repercussions across the years. Knowing very little of the exact course of events at this time (my own memories mainly involve the dark and threatening AIDS-awareness television adverts of the 1980s), this book was an education not only in this part of history, but in the sense of seeing it through such personal perspectives.

Through a large cast of characters - occasionally reminiscent of a family saga - Rebecca Makkai sensitively explores the events of the time with a clear depth of research and a delicate hand. At many points throughout the book, I found myself wondering where we would ultimately see the characters end up - essentially, who would survive.

The narrative switches between the early 1980s to the 21st century, where we follow one of the main characters many years later as they face a personal crisis of their own. These more-recent scenes explore current events through the lens of the 1980s devastation and how it has reverberated down the years to affect subsequent generations. There is also an art-focused thread running through the book, with a particularly endearing subplot involving a gallery bequest, and I really enjoyed these scenes.

Make no mistake: this book will demand emotional investment (and several tissues). The emotional turmoil these young men go through as they hear of new diagnoses, their fear of the possibility of infection, and the gently devastating endings we see for several characters all combine to create a heartbreaking but necessary read. I really cared about the people in this book, and I did find it incredibly emotional at several points. I would definitely read more from Rebecca Makkai. Thank you to Netgalley for the preview copy.