The Great Believers

This is partly a historical novel, set in the early 1980's in Chicago among a group of gay men whose community is devastated by AIDS. The other part of the novel is set 30 years later in Paris as the younger sister of one of those men, Fiona, searches for her estranged daughter. The novel alternates between the two storylines one chapter at a time.

I was riveted by the earlier storyline. I thought Makkai captured so well the sense of these young men at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic trying to take care of each other and their community and at the same time go on with their normal lives. One of the things I found so moving was how healthy people learned what to plan for from their sick friends—what kind of insurance to get, which hospital or doctor to go to, how to assign a trusted person your power of attorney so that your wishes would be respected if your disapproving family tried to meddle with your care when you were too sick to advocate for yourself. The main character of this part of the book, Yale, is a gay man working as an art curator for an up and coming gallery. He was a friend of Fiona's brother, Nico, who has died of AIDS just as the novel begins. In the course of doing his job and showing up for his community, Yale suffers two breathtaking betrayals that upend his life.

The second part of the book is set in 2015 in Paris, where Fiona has hired a detective to find her daughter and grandchild. She stays with Richard, a now famous photographer who got his start in Chicago in the ‘80's, and was part of the community of gay men that Fiona knew so well. Richard provides the comfort of someone who has known her since her youth and the discomfort of proximity to so many sad memories. I didn't like this storyline as much because I found myself annoyed by Claire, the runaway daughter. However, I did like getting to know Fiona's story after she was done taking care of her dying friends, and seeing the reverberations throughout her life of that time.