The great believers

by Rebecca Makkai

Paper Book, 2019

Collections

Publication

[New York] : Penguin Books, 2019.

Description

-- 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.… (more)

Media reviews

...there’s a lot going on in The Great Believers, and while Makkai doesn’t always manage to make all the plates spin perfectly, she remains thoughtful and consistent throughout about the importance of memory and legacy, and the pain that can come with survival.
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Makkai finds surprising resonances across time and experience, offering a timely commentary on the price of memory and the role of art in securing legacies at risk of being lost.
“The Great Believers” offers a grand fusion of the past and the present, the public and the personal. It’s remarkably alive despite all the loss it encompasses. And it’s right on target in addressing how the things that the world throws us feel gratuitously out of step with the lives we
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think we’re leading.
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Awards

National Book Award (Finalist — Fiction — 2018)
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2020)
Pulitzer Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 2019)
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 2018)
Stonewall Book Award (Winner — 2019)
Vermont Book Award (Finalist — Fiction — 2019)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Fiction — 2019)
Boston Globe Best Book (Fiction — 2018)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Literary Fiction — 2018)
Notable Books List (Fiction — 2019)
ALA Over the Rainbow Book List (Selection — Literary and General Interest — 2019)
Illinois Reads (Adult — 2019)

Language

Physical description

421 p.; 21 cm

ISBN

9780735223530
Page: 1.414 seconds