Weekday Reading Update
Review
The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai
Penguin Books
2018
With a new book published in February, I thought I would read Rebecca Makkai’s previous novel, The Great Believers.
Yale Tishman is an art gallery curator in the 1980s and is part of the gay community in Chicago.
He finds himself diagnosed with HIV, something the community must deal with during the politically hostile time during the Reagan administration.
Fiona is the younger sister of a friend named Nico. She does what she can at a young age to help her brother and his friends, after Nico was not welcomed by his parents after they found out he was gay.
Thirty years later in Paris, Fiona is staying with a photographer who documented the LGBTQIA+ community during the 1980s. She is also searching for a daughter she had been separated from for many years.
After spending time at the annual Pride parade, and queer film festival in town for many years, I know vaguely the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the gay community, but I had not read an entire book on the subject until The Great Believers.
The author discusses the role of an ally in the telling of the story and history in the acknowledgements, and the need to read further from accounts by members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
The novel is well crafted with nuance, wit, as well as detachment and distance in some places, and intimacy and passion in others. The story carries the reader through the process of queer community building, political movement and protest, as well as dealing with grief and mortality.
Books on the Go
- Cherish Farrah
by Bethany C. Morrow - Kingdom of Souls
by Rena Barron - Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
I posted my April TBR earlier this week in a video I made that is currently on Youtube. Find it here https://youtu.be/pbxJIli3-UQ
Here is the list of books just in case you missed the video:
- Cherish Farrah
by Bethany C. Morrow - The Ones We Are Meant to Find
by Joan He - Bootleg Stardust
by Glenn Dixon - Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel - The Luminaries
by Eleanor Catton