The Great Believers

Yale pulled himself together and turned back to Richard. He said, You have a beautiful place. A wave of people came up behind them, pushing Yale and Charlie into the living room.     

Inside, the decor didn t scream 1972 so much as 1872: chintz sofas, velvety chairs with carved arms, oriental rugs. Yale felt Charlie squeeze his hand as they dove into the crowd.     

Nico had made it clear there was to be a party. If I get to hang out as a ghost, you think I wanna see sobbing? I ll haunt you. You sit there crying, I ll throw a lamp across the room, okay? I ll shove a poker up your ass, and not in a good way. If he d died just two days ago, they wouldn t have had it in them to follow through. But Nico died three weeks back, and the family delayed the vigil and funeral until his grandfather, the one no one had seen in twenty years, could fly in from Havana. Nico s mother was the product of a brief, pre-Castro marriage between a diplomat s daughter and a Cuban musician and now this ancient Cuban man was crucial to the funeral planning, while Nico s lover of three years wasn t even welcome at the church tonight. Yale couldn t think about it or he d fume, which wasn t what Nico wanted.   

  In any case, they d spent three weeks mourning and now Richard s house brimmed with forced festivity. There were Julian and Teddy, for instance, waving down from the second-story railing that encircled the room. Another floor rose above that, and an elaborate round skylight presided over the whole space. It was more of a cathedral than the church had been. Someone shrieked with laughter far too close

San Francisco Chronicle

At turns heartbreaking and hopeful, the novel brings the first years of the AIDS epidemic into very immediate view, in a manner that will seem nostalgic to some and revelatory to others Makkai's sweeping fourth novel shows the compassion of chosen families and the tension and distance that can exist in our birth ones. Library Journal

"Sure to become a classic Chicago novel a deft, harrowing novel that s as beautiful as its cover. Chicago Review of Books

The latest novel from the stunningly versatile Makkai Focused on a group of friends, lovers, and family outcasts, the book highlights the way tragic illness shifts the courses of people s lives and how its touch forever lingers on those left behind. Harper s Bazaar

A devastating contemplation of love and loss evokes the epidemic's horrors, yes, but also the profound acts of generosity it sparked. Oprah.com, O s Top Books of Summer
 
Deeply moving Makkai does an excellent job of capturing the jaded, ironic and affectionately jibing small talk of a group of cultured gay friends in the Reagan era [Captures] a group of friends in a particular time and place with humor and compassion. Conversations among her gay male characters feel very real not too flamboyant, not too serious, always morbidly witty. It's hard not to get drawn into this circle of promising young men as they face their brutally premature extinction. Newsday
 
Two distinct narratives intertwine ingeniously The stories meet up to heartbreaking effect. New York Magazine
 
A poignant, historical journey through a virus s outbreak and legacy. Conde Nast Traveler
 
Rebecca Makkai s beautiful (literally look at that cover!) novel takes us to an art gallery in Chicago at the height of the AIDS crisis. From Chicago to Paris, THE GREAT BELIEVERS is a sweeping story of multi-generational trauma and the solitude that the AIDS epidemic created, as an entire generation was decimated by the virus. Fodor s Travel

"With its broad time span and bedrock of ferocious, loving friendships, [The Great Believers] might remind readers of Hanya Yanagihara s A Little Life though it is, overall, far brighter than that novel. As her intimately portrayed characters wrestle with painful pasts and fight to love one another and find joy in the present in spite of what is to come, Makkai carefully reconstructs 1980s Chicago, WWI-era and present day Paris, and scenes of the early days of the AIDS epidemic. A tribute to the enduring forces of love and art, over everything." Booklist (starred review)

To believe in something is to have faith, and Makkai dispenses it fiercely, in defiance of understandable nihilism and despair faith in what s right, in the good in others, in better outcomes, in time s ability not to heal but to make something new. National Book Review

Another ambitious change of pace for the versatile and accomplished [Rebecca] Makkai her rich portraits of an array of big personalities and her affecting depiction of random, horrific death faced with varying degrees of gallantry make this tender, keening novel an impressive act of imaginative empathy. As compulsively readable as it is thoughtful and moving: an unbeatable fictional combination. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)