The Great Believers

I came of age in the AIDS era. In the late 80s and 90s, the spectre of the disease hung over me and my gay friends like the threat of nuclear war -- only much more personal and immediate. Safe sex messages were everywhere, posters of cute boys kissing, labelled with chirpy admonitions. I was terrified of something happening to one of my friends, I wished they would all stay celibate forever (no chance). But gradually treatments appeared, then really good treatments, and eventually HIV became a manageable chronic illness rather than a death sentence.

In The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai draws a deft comparison between the devastation of a generation in the First World War, and the similar catastrophe wreaked by AIDS on a whole community. Her story focuses on Yale, a young gay man, and Fiona, the straight sister of his friend Nico, and it's Fiona who acts as a witness, support, and advocate, and ultimately memory-keeper, for a whole friendship family. The novel alternates between Chicago in the late 80s and Paris in 2015 where Fiona is searching for her estranged daughter, and I found the Chicago sections more compelling. The plot also deals with an art legacy, acquired in Paris in the 1920s, and this theme beautifully highlights the duty of memory, story-keeping and the role of art (with this novel itself forming a part of that witnessing).

I absolutely loved The Great Believers, it's a sensational novel. I also thoroughly enjoyed Makkai's later novel, I Have Some Questions For You, but The Great Believers is, I think, more moving and substantial. Highly recommended.